Fade To Nothing
by Kadi219
Summary: [Raydor/Flynn] The "fix it" fic that I promised. Let's just pretend the last seven episodes never happened. How do you survive when life suddenly begins to fade toward nothing?
1. Chapter 1

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **Disclaimer:** It's not my sandbox… but maybe I should stage a coup and take over. Like I tell the kids, if you're going to break the toys on purpose, you can't have them to play with.

 **A/N:** I did my own research. This research did not just include google, but I happen to actually know some real doctors. The Flu can lead to a form of inflammatory cardiomyopathy, more commonly known as acute myocarditis. The prognosis in healthy individuals is actually very good. There is no reason at all that Sharon would have gotten so sick, so quickly, or died within weeks of her diagnosis…. But then, we already knew that.

That's okay. I fixed it.

 **Warning:** Character Death, but not _that_ character.

This was rather cathartic for me. Some of you will like it. Some of you will hate it. This was a form of fanfic therapy for me. I will go back to "Edge" when this is done. I haven't been able to focus on that … mainly because I was RL busy leading in to fall, and especially the holidays, but a good deal of it was anxiety. I think a great many of us suspected as early as August that we would have this ending. We knew, deep in our bones, we knew that Sharon was going to die.

I tried to talk myself out of it. I tried, very hard, to convince myself that I was only being fatalistic and paranoid. The evidence was there, however. I even managed to predict that they'd kill Emma too. I really hoped that I would be wrong about Sharon. I didn't want to be anxious about the season. I didn't want it to hurry up and be over so that I would just _know_.

Then it happened. Like many of you, I am mad. Freaking furious, in fact, for so many reasons that I won't get into here. It goes well beyond the death of a beloved character, and that is all that I will say.

Anyway, before you fire up your flames, keep in mind that I was quite vocal about the _ensemble_ side of things. It was not the Sharon show. It was not the Shandy Show. It was not #MajorSuspenders either (and why the hell not? I would have been down for that!).

You will know by the end of this chapter if you want to continue or not. If you don't, I understand. If you do, bear with me. This one really hurts. Not as much as watching the show did, but it hurts. At least, it did for me.

Thank you to the twin **kate04** for listening to my paranoia in all those weeks leading up to 609, and for being the sounding board for this idea. My sassy beta **NarcissaNerea** swept this for errors and good sense, and I love her for it. I think I got them all, but as my darling twin would say, if you find any spare errors, they are yours to keep with my blessing!

Much love everyone.

~Kadi

* * *

 **Chapter 1**

After two weeks spent traveling, sleeping in hotels and inns, and one beautiful seaside cottage, Sharon and Andy were happy to be home. Ireland was absolutely breathtaking, and they had fully enjoyed every moment of their honeymoon, but no matter how peaceful and wonderful their time away was, they could not exist in that bubble forever.

Andy would have liked to. With everything that had happened before the wedding, with Sharon's collapse and the subsequent cardiomyopathy diagnosis, Andy would have liked nothing more than to keep his wife far from the stress that they would be returning to once they were back at work. That wasn't Sharon, though, and as much as he wanted to protect her, he also wanted her to be happy. She wouldn't be happy with him trying to shield her, and eventually she would resent him. That was something that he knew only too well.

They had their share of arguments during his health crisis the previous year. Sharon had perfected the art of hovering, and while he had appreciated it, especially when he had been recovering from his little _dust up_ with the car and his blood clot, it had gotten old quick following his heart attack. He was being brutally honest when he told Sharon that no one had ever cared for him as well as she had, but he didn't want to be taken care of anymore than she did. With that thought in mind, Andy was trying to refrain from coddling her.

It helped that she had gotten a second opinion and more specific testing from the cardiologist that her primary care doctor had referred her to. Doctor Torres came highly recommended and they had done their own research into his qualifications and reputation. It helped that Sharon's doctor knew him. Torres had a two-month waiting list, but they had been fast tracked. They were in his office within days of the wedding. He had looked over all of the results sent over from the hospital, and followed up with Sharon's doctor. Then he scrapped it all and performed his own tests.

Sharon was irritated by that. She didn't want to take the time; it seemed her life was being taken over by doctors appointments, lab visits for blood work and follow-up, scans, and even a cardiac biopsy. It was only Ricky reminding her of what had happened when Andy ignored his own heart symptoms, and Emily refusing to go home until she agreed, that finally convinced her to take the two days off work for the testing.

In the end, Torres confirmed the findings of the cardiology attending at Good Samaritan, the hospital paramedics had transported Sharon to following her collapse. The flu virus that Sharon had found so difficult to recover from had led to a case of viral myocarditis. What Doctor Torres had not agreed on were the medications that the other doctor had prescribed. He adjusted her medications and refused to sign a return to work order. He wanted to monitor his new patient, to be certain that her condition was improving before allowing her to return to a high stress environment.

To say that Sharon was displeased was an understatement. Andy had taken the brunt of it, but she had agreed. The one thing Sharon could never argue with, even when she didn't like it, was logic. Doctor Torres was quite blunt about it, too. She could go back to work and die, or she could take the time off and live. It was really up to her, and in the end, Andy had breathed a huge sigh of relief when she agreed that her life was more important than her job.

That didn't mean that she was completely inactive. She had a new diet, a new exercise regimen, and being unable to go into the office didn't stop her from following the progress of their investigations. Andy knew better than to try and keep the details of their cases away from her. He also remembered how that felt, being relegated to medical leave, and feeling shut out. He still struggled with it, being the division's _dedicated_ _desk monkey_. He kept her apprised, and while she couldn't actively work with them, the fact that her heart was impacted by her illness had done nothing to her mind. Sharon was as invaluable to them on medical leave as she was when she was leading them.

Sharon was anxious to return to work, though. The eight weeks of medical leave were mandatory, according to Torres. He was treating it as though she had a heart attack. As he explained it, much of the damage to her heart was the same; the only problem was that the virus's effect had been prolonged. Sharon could recover. She could live a long and fulfilled life. She just had to give her heart the chance to get stronger again.

Since she couldn't work, Andy wondered if there was any reason to continue postponing their honeymoon. She was certainly feeling better, and at her three-week checkup with Dr. Torres, he seemed to think that she was improving. Andy decided to put the idea out there. If Sharon didn't want to sit at home, doing a whole lot of nothing, why couldn't they go to Ireland?

Torres was concerned that a week traveling abroad would be too hard on her system. Before Andy could deflate, he suggested that if they extended their trip, and made sure they didn't venture too far away from medical care, just in case it was needed, he didn't see why they couldn't take their honeymoon trip. Sharon would need to keep up with her medications, and they couldn't allow her to tire herself out, but the trip wasn't entirely out of the question. He added a few more restrictions; there would be no hiking or an extreme amount of stairs, and he wanted her back in his office as soon as they returned, but he gave them his approval.

That was how their weeklong trip to Ireland had been extended to two. Andy almost expected Sharon to balk at the idea, but she had the opposite reaction. They would spend a little more time relaxing, and trade castle exploration for a trip to a few museums, but she was happy to go.

It wasn't all they had done while they were in Ireland, and just the opportunity to lie with his wife in his arms, with no chance of the phone ringing or having their time together interrupted by their children, their jobs, or any other outside forces was enough for Andy. He would willingly take her back, take her anywhere she wanted to go, for those hours of peace, and for the chance to watch all of their worries melt away and pure joy to light her eyes.

For now, they were home. They had spent twelve hours traveling and Andy wanted a hot shower and his own bed. He grunted as he maneuvered their luggage into the condo's lobby while Sharon held the door for him. His wife could not pack light if her life depended on it, and he was sure that half of her shoes had ended up in his bag. He also knew that they had brought back far more than they had taken with them. He shook his head while she laughed at him.

"These wouldn't be so heavy if you hadn't insisted on bringing three pairs of boots," he grumbled, but his tone lacked heat and held a lot of affection.

"Hm." Sharon's lips pursed. She followed him in to the lobby with a smile. "They wouldn't be so heavy if you hadn't insisted on packing the books you bought me, instead of shipping them home," she reminded him.

He cut a look at her. His lip curled, and when the corners of her eyes crinkled in amusement, Andy rolled his eyes at her. "It was cheaper just to bring them back. I wasn't going to pay that to ship a couple of books across the Atlantic. It was nuts!"

"Six." Sharon sauntered past him toward the security desk. "It's six books, Andy, not a couple. The shipping fee was expensive but not outrageous. We're home now, and unless the elevator is suddenly out of service, I think you'll be okay with those bags." He was only allowing her to carry her purse and small carryon. Sharon smiled brightly at the security guard stationed at the desk. The condo association made sure that the desk was occupied around the clock. They were really glorified doormen, and women, but it was nice to have someone monitoring deliveries and making sure that the security cameras at the entrance and in the parking garage were always working. "Hi Danny, do we have any deliveries to pick up?"

The security guard had risen when they approached. He smiled back at them. "Rusty has been picking up your mail," he nodded to the wall of post boxes behind them. "This came for you this morning." He opened a cabinet beneath the desk and pulled out a small, flat box. "Sharon Flynn, unit 1109."

Sharon's brow rose. She turned the box toward her and read the return address. Her eyes narrowed. The package had come from a shop that she liked, but she hadn't ordered anything recently. She turned and cast a look at her husband. His wide, sarcastic grin gave him away. "That," she pointed a finger at him, "is still under discussion, Andrew."

"Oh come on." He stood behind her, the bags at his feet. Andy spread his arms wide. "Just how long are we going to _discuss_ this? It's been more than a month since the wedding. We spent six months planning the wedding, and you still haven't made up your mind?" He rolled his eyes heavenward and groaned. "I don't believe this."

"Says the one who doesn't have to fill out all the paperwork." Sharon flashed another smile at Danny as she picked up the box. He was laughing at them again. She supposed they must be quite amusing to him. This was an argument he had heard before. Sharon turned and made her way toward the elevator. "We won't even discuss the number of forms required for work, because more than one Flynn in our division is way too much if you ask me." The corners of her mouth were twitching toward a smile as she heard him grunt and the sound of the wheels of their bags moving across the lobby's tiled floor. "I have to change my license, my social security card, my passport. The bank won't change my name on our accounts. We'll have to go down in person with a copy of the marriage license and open new ones, oh, and I don't even want to think about all the hoops that I have to jump through for the mortgage company to get everything changed on that." She stopped at the elevator and turned, her head inclining while he caught up with her. When he did, Sharon reached out and hit the button to bring the elevator car back to the lobby. "I don't remember there being so much paperwork to deal with when I got married the first time. All you had to do is sign a marriage license," she told him, "I've got to practically reorganize my entire life. If I had realized that it was going to be this complicated…" She watched his eyes narrow and her smile blossomed brighter. Sharon leaned toward him. "I would still have gone through with it," she drawled, and reached out to run her hand down his chest, where his tie would have been if he was wearing one. The pale blue cashmere of his sweater was soft against her fingers. She tipped her face up and kissed the tip of his chin. "That doesn't mean that I am changing my name." She leaned away from him, chuckling when he rolled his eyes at her again. "At least not right now."

Andy sighed. He supposed she had a point. It was a lot to take care of, and she had only scratched the surface. There were credit cards to change, utilities, brokerage accounts. He did have the easy end of the deal. "Yeah, alright. I guess we do have a lot going on right now." His eyes narrowed. "Doesn't mean we will always have all that going on."

"No." The elevator opened for them and Sharon stepped inside; she held the button to keep the doors open while he joined her. "We won't always have this much going on in our lives." It was the only concession that she could give him. It was hard giving up a name that had been part of her identity for more than half her life, and certainly for longer than she had known him. That didn't mean that she was unwilling. She had promised herself to him in front of their friends, their family, and their God. Changing her name was a minor consideration, but she knew that it was important to him. She also understood why. If Jack had passed away, or behaved in a less contemptuous manner, she didn't think Andy would really have a problem with her taking so long to make up her mind about taking his name. There was also the fact that, as traditional as she was about many things, so was he. She had no problem changing her name when she married the first time, and that marriage had been annulled so that she could marry Andy in as traditional a way as possible. It was only natural that he would want her to take his name. Honestly, she wasn't completely opposed to the idea. She just wasn't ready yet.

He seemed to sense the shift in her thoughts. Andy left their bags standing in the back of the elevator and wrapped his arms around her from behind. "I know, babe," his voice rumbled quietly against her ear. "You just aren't there yet." He kissed the side of her head and settled his chin against her shoulder. "It'll all settle down soon." There had just been too many things thrown at her lately. First all of the drama with the church, thanks to that St. Joseph's Three case, and then just when they thought she was finally getting over the flu, they found out they were wrong. Getting diagnosed with a heart condition, on top of the wedding, her promotion, and the changes going on in the department, it was no wonder she didn't feel like surrendering anything else. She was going to have to see Torres again in a few days, and she promised him that she was feeling as rested as she looked, but living with this heart condition was an even bigger change than getting married had been. He knew how that felt. He understood it all. Andy told himself that he would try to be more patient.

"Hm." She hummed as she leaned back in his arms. Sharon laid hers over his and turned her face toward him. She rubbed her forehead against his cheek and let her eyes close. "It will," she agreed. "I really believe that. We are going to be okay." She was really grateful that he had talked her out of postponing the wedding. She needed this. Oh, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, and had for decades. She _wanted_ him in her life. She wanted him holding her, telling her that everything would be okay, that he was here to help her carry all of her burdens, even though she could carry them herself. It made it all feel so much lighter to know that she was so well loved. She could lean against him, if she felt that she needed to, even if that only meant having him hold her as he was now.

"Yeah." Andy kissed her shoulder, where her sweater had slipped, revealing smooth, pale skin. He straightened as the elevator neared their floor, but rubbed his hands up and down her arms. "We should talk to your doctor about that diet. You're losing too much weight."

Her lips curved. She chuckled quietly. "I'm not going to complain about losing a few pounds." Her diet hadn't honestly changed that much. She maintained a healthy lifestyle anyway, but she had already made several changes the year before when he had the heart attack. The difference now was only that she was eating on a more regular schedule since she wasn't working. There were no quick meals between suspect interviews, no late night takeout when they finally managed to drag themselves home. The last two weeks had been good for both of them. While they were tired from traveling, she felt better than she had in a while. She knew that Andy did too. He was looking much better. Gone was the drawn, worried expression that he had been wearing for the last month. He was relaxed and happy, and his blood pressure hadn't spiked even once since they had been away. Well, maybe once or twice. She smirked to herself as she recalled the reason for that. Sharon resolved to keep him this healthy and relaxed. Hers wasn't the only heart they had to worry about. There was humor sparkling in her eyes when she looked up at him. "Maybe we should see if Doctor Torres would be willing to take you on too." Her brow arched. "Perhaps we could get a family discount."

Andy gave her a bland look. She had to be feeling better if she was making jokes about it. "You're not funny."

"Oh, I think I am." The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened. Sharon held them while he moved past her with their bags. She adjusted her purse and the carryon, while juggling the package, and dug out her keys. "That was a little funny. Think about it. We have excellent insurance, and if we can get him to see us at the same time, we'll cut down on the cost of the office visit. At the very least we would always know that time was put aside for us to spend together."

He glowered at her as she walked past him and led the way down the hall. "And yet, _still_ not funny, Sharon."

"Yes." She laughed at him. "It was." She was still smiling as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. Sharon moved into the condo ahead of him. She dropped her keys in the bowl on the table near the door and took a deep breath. It was really good to be home. "Rusty," she called out for her son. "Are you here?" She hummed quietly when there was no response and hung her purse in the closet. She waited for Andy to maneuver the bags into the condo before she closed the door. "Just leave them there for now," she told him, when he parked the bags near the end of the hall. She placed her carryon on her suitcase and smiled up at him. "Home sweet home."

"Thank god." He cupped her face and pressed a light kiss to her lips.

"Mmhm." She curled her hands around his wrists. Sharon smiled against his lips. "How about some tea? We'll rest for a little while, and then we can deal with the unpacking."

Andy groaned again. "That is always the worst part." He kissed her again before he turned away. Andy shrugged out of his jacket and placed it on the rack near the door. He helped Sharon out of hers and watched her walk in to the kitchen. He moved closer to the hall. The condo was dark, but Sharon was turning on lamps as she moved to the kitchen. "Hey kid," he called down the hall, his voice echoing louder than Sharon's, "you here?"

"I'll send him a text," Sharon said. "They must have caught a case. I guess Andrea needed him today." When they had spoken to him the previous afternoon, he was planning to meet them at the condo. They had planned on arranging a car from the airport, so that no one would have to deal with that traffic or be stuck waiting on them if their flight was delayed for any reason.

"Yeah." Andy shook his head. He rolled his shoulders and turned to hang up Sharon's jacket. He couldn't imagine what case would be complicated enough that Hobbs would call Rusty in the same day they were getting home. "I guess he's turning out more like you than we thought. First law school, and the next thing we know, his plan to practice family law is gonna be tossed out the window. He'll end up in the DA's office, or worse, working for the city attorney."

Sharon laughed as he grumbled. "There are worse things that he could be than a lawyer," she reminded him. "Before you answer, I'd like to remind you that _I_ was going to go to law school."

Andy snorted at her. "Sure, Sharon, we'll go with that." He could never see her as a lawyer, and had told her as much in the past. She was the smartest person he knew, but she believed in the law far too much to have ever been very happy being a lawyer. "Name one thing that's worse than being a lawyer," he said instead.

"Grumpy police detective," she shot back with a grin. She decided to forgo the tea and made coffee instead. While it was percolating, she sent Rusty a text to let him know that they were home.

"My wife is a damn comedian," he muttered. Andy shoved his hands into his pockets while he moved around the condo. The mail was on the desk, along with a couple of other packages that had arrived while they were on their honeymoon. He flipped through the envelopes but didn't see anything that would require their immediate attention. His lip curled at the sight of another damn medical bill. He put that in the inbox where Sharon kept the bills to be reviewed and dropped the rest of the mail back onto the desk. He rolled his shoulders again.

As glad as he was to get home, there was something a little unsettling about it too. He wondered if it was just because they had been away for so long. Andy huffed a sigh. His gaze was drawn back toward the hall. "I'm going to take the bags to our room," he told her. Maybe if he got them out of his sight he would be able to relax more. If he didn't have to think about unpacking later, he could trick himself into believing it was already done. Out of sight, out of mind.

"Just put them by the closet," Sharon said. "I'm making coffee instead. Are you hungry?"

"Not right now. Figure out when the kid will be back. We can have him pick something up on his way home." Andy didn't particularly feel like cooking and he was sure that Sharon didn't either. He lifted the strap of her carryon bag over his shoulder before taking the handles of their suitcases and pushing her bag down the hall while he pulled his along behind him. Andy managed to only trip over the damn things once as he carried them into their room. He took a couple of minutes, after leaving the bags, to step into the bathroom. When he moved into the hall, he felt it again, the unease that was causing the muscles between his shoulder blades to tense.

A frown drew his brows together. Andy stepped across the hall and stopped in front of Rusty's closed bedroom door. His jaw clenched. The kid usually left it open when he wasn't home. There was something else, something on the air. It was something that Andy knew entirely too well. He felt that tension settle across his shoulders before it moved through him. The tips of his fingers itched as he reached out to twist the doorknob.

The change in his breathing was instinctual, like balancing when taking a step. It was something he did automatically after being a cop for more than thirty years. Andy kept his touch light; he didn't want to disturb anything. He pushed the bedroom door inward and pivoted. "Hey kid." Just in case he was wrong, he called out again, more quietly this time. "You around?"

There was no answer. Of course there wouldn't be. Andy's jaw clenched again. His teeth ground together. With the door open, what he had only sensed hit him full force. It was death, and it had come for them.

On the wall behind the bed, a note had been left for them. It was written in marker. There would be no question as to what had happened.

" _I don't leave any witnesses._ _The mother is next._ "

He had located Rusty, but the kid couldn't respond. He lay, lifeless, face gray, eyes open and clouded, staring at the ceiling of his room. Andy's fists clenched, but before he could do more than take a cursory look at the room, he heard his wife call out to him down the hall. He stepped back and looked toward the sound of her voice. She was walking toward him, her phone in her hand and a smile on her face.

"Well, Rusty didn't bother to answer me," Sharon told him. "So I called Andrea. He isn't with her. She assured me that she gave him today off. I hope he didn't go to the airport. You did tell him that we were taking a _Lyft_ home, didn't you?"

"Yeah." Somehow he managed to force enough air into his lungs to get the sound out. Andy walked toward her. His heart was pounding a rhythm in his chest. He was surprised she couldn't hear it. It was certainly loud enough as it echoed in his ears. "Come on." He held his arms out to keep her from moving further down the hall.

"I suppose he could have gone out to pick up dinner, or groceries. You should see how empty the refrigerator and pantry are. Someone would think an army had eaten here while we were gone, not a single twenty-one-year-old boy. Although it's possible he had company," she continued. "We were gone for two weeks. I hope it wasn't Gus." Her nose wrinkled. Sharon took a step back when Andy crowded her personal space. "I'd like to think he was staying firm on—" She stopped talking and frowned at him. He seemed very off all of a sudden. The relaxed, happy glow appeared to have faded. His eyes had gone serious, and when she looked at him a little more closely, she realized that he had gone ashen. Sweat was glistening on his upper lip. "Andy, what is it?" She laid a hand against his chest, and let it slide upward to the crook of his neck. His heart was beating a mile a minute. "Are you in pain?" They had been so worried about her these past few weeks; she hoped the stress hadn't been too much for him.

"No." He said it a little too abruptly, and felt badly about that. "Sharon, I'm fine. We should just go back out into the other room." Andy placed his hands against her shoulders and tried to turn her. It might be foolish on his part, but he didn't want her to see that. Not if he could help it.

"You don't look fine." She resisted as he tried to turn her. "Andy, you don't look well. Do you need your pills? What…" She stopped moving. She stopped talking. She felt his hands grip her shoulders harder. The air at this end of the condo felt thick. It was stifled and musty. Sharon took another breath and felt her stomach turn. The bitter, metallic smell of blood was wafting toward them. Her eyes moved past his shoulder to the open door at the end of the hall. Sharon stared at it. Her heart skipped a beat, and then a second. Slowly her eyes lifted. She met her husband's gaze. It was the sorrow in his dark eyes that made her shove him away from her. "Rusty!"

She tried to walk around him, but Andy wrapped an arm around her waist. "Sharon, you can't go in there." It was on the tip of his tongue to remind her that it was a crime scene, but he couldn't bring himself to actually form the words. He drew her back, managed to move a single step before she was fighting him.

"Let go of me." Her voice pitched low. It would chill a lesser man. It was the tone she used on suspects and recalcitrant officers. Sharon pulled at his arms. He had a firm grip on her waist, though. He was pulling her back, even as she tried to throw her weight away from him. "Dammit, Andy. _Let go_!"

Her nails bit in to his hands. He dodged her feet when she tried to stomp on his instep. "Not on your life, babe." He wrapped his other arm around her torso and held her tightly against his chest. "We can't go in there, Sharon." His chest clenched. There was an ache in his throat, making it hard to breathe and even harder to speak. Andy turned his face into her hair. "He's gone, sweetheart," his voice hitched as he forced the words out, "you can't help him now."

"No." She stubbornly refused to accept that. Sharon continued to struggle. "Let me… Rusty!" Her knees buckled. Somewhere in the back of her minds he knew that Andy wouldn't keep her away if there was any hope at all. " _No_. _Rusty!"_

Andy knew the memory of seeing Rusty's lifeless body would stay with him for the rest of his days, but it was the sound of his wife's anguished, desperate screams that would haunt him forever.

 **-TBC-**


	2. Chapter 2

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** If you made it through Chapter 1, and you're still here… thanks!

First off… I know people. I _know_! I warned you that I felt like I had to write this. The note at the beginning of Chapter 1 clearly points out that this wasn't going to a happy place. This is the dark, emotional, angsty place that Duff took me to. Sometimes, the best way to get out of it is just to write it and move on. I'm not happy either, the angst I write always has a payoff, but where is the payoff in this? I get it. I _totally_ get it.

This whole idea was a result of the fact that Duff likes symmetry. He likes to use mirrors in the writing. When we began theorizing during the summer that Sharon was going to die, I suggested that was how he would use his mirror. Rusty would face Stroh for the last time after losing his mother, just as Brenda had done.

A friend of mine, who prefers to remain anonymous, stated that it would make more sense for it to be Rusty (although Rusty is that friend's fave). The symmetry could easily be found in Rusty's file being the first case to cross Sharon's desk when she took over Major Crimes, and the last case to cross it before the series ended. When it was put to me that way, it did make an incredible amount of sense. We just had a hard time believing that the series would really end on a character death, even though the clues were all there. Again, we didn't _want_ to believe it! We didn't want either to happen.

Now that we _know_ , and there are all these dark and traumatic feels, this idea stuck with me. I didn't just want to explore what would have happened if this had been the symmetrical path, I felt like I _needed_ to explore it. I'm going to the dark place, and it sucks. It hurts like hell.

So I really appreciate those that are sticking around.

Much, much love & light to you all.

~K

* * *

 **Chapter 2**

The first thing that Julio noticed when he stepped off the elevator on the eleventh floor was the cops standing in the hall. This was not the buzz of activity that was normally found at a crime scene. The atmosphere was somber. This was one of their own.

Julio squared his shoulders and strode toward the condo at the end of the hall. He nodded to the uniformed officers standing at the door and flashed his badge as he stepped inside. His eyes scanned the interior. He spotted Sykes first. Her eyes were red, and as she filled out the logbook, he watched her reach up and swipe a tear away from her cheek. Julio's gaze continued to circle the room. The Commander was seated on the sofa. She was staring straight ahead, neither moving nor speaking. There was a man beside her that he didn't recognize, but from the stethoscope around his neck and the way he was holding her wrist, Julio guessed that was her doctor. He figured Flynn or the others must have called him, although he didn't know exactly _why._ Patrice was on her other side, slowly stroking her back and speaking quietly.

He decided not to interrupt. A muscle in his cheek ticked as Julio forced himself to turn away. She was being taken care of right now, and he needed some answers. He turned his attention down the hall and located Tao and Flynn. Julio walked toward them. His steps felt heavier as he got closer to Rusty's room, and the detectives standing outside it. He held up his hands and gestured helplessly when he reached them. "What the hell happened?"

Flynn was leaning against the wall. His hands were shoved into his pockets. He shook his head and looked away. He had already given his statement, and he figured he would have to give it again, several times, before it was all said and done with. At the moment it wasn't another detective that was asking him, and Andy couldn't deal with that. His ears were still ringing with the sound of Sharon's cries. He hadn't managed to get her more than a few steps down the hall before she collapsed against him. All the fight had gone out of her, and she had simply folded herself against him. The screams had faded to whispered prayers and while he carried her to the sofa, she begged God to make this all a terrible dream, and to take her instead.

He held her there, and for just a few minutes, he hadn't known what to do or who to call. He hadn't known how to break that news, and he definitely didn't know how he was meant to help his wife now, but Andy knew that he had to call it in. The only problem was that every member of his team was tied to this. That was his boss's kid. His stepson. Provenza had been like an uncle sometimes, a grandfather other times, and hell, if he was honest about it, there were times when he was like a father to the kid. Buzz was like his brother. Julio and Mike had been honorary uncles. Amy had taught him what it meant to have a big sister, long before Rusty got close to Emily. That really only left him Nolan, or the new gal, Detective Paige.

It was all more than he could fathom, and really, Andy was already thinking ahead to getting his wife out of there. He was worried about what this was going to do to her health, and calling her kids. He called Chief Mason instead. He let the other man take it out of his hands, and Andy focused on what mattered. He called Sharon's doctor, because this was exactly the kind of stress and emotional upheaval that he told them to avoid.

All that he could do after that was wait. Hold her and wait. It took a while for people to start arriving. Sharon had gone silent before the first uniformed officers arrived. Mike had gotten there before the rest of the team. He was as stunned and horrified as Andy, and even a little disbelieving, but one look at the Commander had helped him to keep it together. Mike was worried that she was going into shock, and while none of the team knew all the specifics of her heart condition, Tao warned him it could be bad for her.

They waited, together, for the rest of the team to begin arriving. Only the uniformed officers had ventured down the hall to get a look at the crime scene. Amy had arrived a few minutes after Tao, with Nolan and Paige not far behind her. They had all come from the office; all of them except Julio, who had taken the day off to spend with Mark. He was called, but they knew it would be a while before he joined them. Provenza was the last to arrive. He got there just a couple of minutes after Sharon's doctor. Andy realized what had taken him so long when he saw who was with him. Provenza had picked up Patrice on the way, and left her to help Torres take care of Sharon while the rest of them focused on the horror waiting down the hall.

Andy took them back there. He walked them through everything that happened when he and Sharon got home. He didn't go into Rusty's room again. He waited in the hall, where he stood now. He had already seen it once, and that was more than enough. He stood, a silent sentinel, while the others worked, while SID and the coroner arrived, and made sure that his wife wouldn't try to make her way back to that room. He figured she was in pretty good hands at the moment, and she didn't need him hovering. She would want him to stay with Rusty, so he had.

He looked at Julio finally. Andy sighed. "I think it's pretty obvious. We left the country. Rusty's security was piss-poor, and now he's dead."

There was a deep, dangerous rumbling in his tone. Julio drew a breath. Rage was simmering underneath the surface, and that was an emotion that he could understand. Someone had messed up. He had a feeling Chief Howard was going to hear about it, and Julio couldn't blame Flynn for that. He wanted to hear that explanation too. Julio's gaze moved to Tao. "Did the doc check him out too?" He nodded his head at the Lieutenant.

Mike glanced at Flynn before he shrugged at his partner. "Yeah, he's fine. I'm keeping an eye on things." He hadn't ventured very far from the other man since he arrived. This was every parent's worst nightmare. This had been the one fear they had all shared for the last six years. It was hard to believe it happened. It was almost like they had only managed to delay the inevitable, like it was always going to come to this.

"Good." Sanchez gave the Lieutenant another hooded, cursory look, then he squared his shoulders again and stepped into the bedroom. Morales and Kendall were there, moving around the bed. There were a couple of SID techs, already taking prints and photographs. Buzz stood in the corner of the room, camera pointed at all of the activity. He looked up when Julio entered, and like Amy, his eyes were red and damp. His jaw was clenched, and he looked away quickly, almost as if acknowledging anyone else would cause his carefully constructed wall of composure to crumble. Julio's gaze moved around the room. It wasn't a very big space. The people present were crowded into it. Wes was standing at the end of the bed, quietly taking notes. Detective Paige was hovering on the other side of the bed, and Julio realized why when he finally spotted the Lieutenant.

He walked toward them and knelt down in front of the older man. Provenza was seated in the chair by the dresser. His hands were dangling loosely between his knees, and his head was bowed. "Sir?"

He sighed. His head slowly lifted. His face was red, blotchy with emotion. His eyes ached, the pain the result of tears he wouldn't let fall. Provenza had seen a lot of things in his time, a lot of horrible, senseless, and stupid things. None of it had ever made him feel quite as helpless as he did now. He met Julio's gaze, shook his head at the concern. "I told myself all the way over here that Mason was wrong. I tried to convince myself that he had the wrong kid. Flynn must have been too upset when he called him, that he was worried about Rusty but it was Gus or someone else they found." That hadn't stopped him from getting Patrice. Maybe he wanted her there for himself, even though he said that he brought her along for Sharon. Provenza's eyes drifted toward the bed again. Kendall had draped him with a sheet, so at least there was that. It didn't really help. "Then we got here," he said, "and I saw _her_." Provenza looked at Julio again. "We find him." His voice dropped to a low, menacing hiss. "If we do nothing else with the rest of our lives, we are going to find that son of a bitch."

The muscle in his jaw ticked again. Julio nodded just once. He looked toward the bed. "Even if I have to track him across Siberia," he promised. Before he drew his last breath he was going to put a bullet in Phillip Stroh's head. He laid a hand against the Lieutenant's shoulder and stood. Julio only lingered for a moment, then he walked to the bed. "Doc, what do we know?"

Morales leaned away from the bed. He wore a somber expression. He didn't usually go into the field himself. It usually took something big to get him to a crime scene. The murdered son of one of his closest colleagues, yes, that warranted a personal visit in his opinion. He would take care of Rusty, in so much as he could, and make sure the detectives had everything they needed to find the person responsible for his death. "He's been dead no more than twelve hours. That matches up to what the detective found when he looked at his phone," he nodded to Nolan.

"The Lieutenant gave us permission." Nolan replied. "It's a family plan. Sykes is logging everything that we've been given permission to check on scene." Normally they would have to catalogue evidence and review it later, but this wasn't a typical situation.

"Good." Julio nodded. They couldn't afford any missteps. They weren't going to let this bastard get away from them again. "What time was the last activity on his phone? Rusty's always on his phone, unless he's asleep or in class."

"Eleven last night," Nolan told him. "He was texting with his brother, Ricky Raydor." Wes had already put the phone into evidence, but he took pictures of the texts and timestamps with his own cell. He pulled up the picture and handed the device to the Detective.

Julio squinted at it, and then enlarged the picture. " _Mom and Andy will get home around noon. He said to wait until next weekend before you come back down to check on her again. It's driving her crazy and she's taking it out on him_." Julio sighed. "Ricky said _haha that's what stepdads are for. Better him than us. Are his kids still being assholes_?"

Sanchez winced and glanced toward the door. He knew that things with Flynn's kids had gotten a little rocky again, leading up to the wedding. Neither of them had shown up, and he and the Commander hadn't mentioned it. "Rusty replied, and this was the last text he sent. _Yes. Charlie has always acted like a prick toward mom. I still don't know what Nicole's problem is. She's got a stick up her butt all of a sudden. I know Andy didn't do anything. We should introduce them to your dad and my birth mom, show them what bad parents really look like. Mom says to stay out of it. Andy's done all he can. She's not letting him bend over backward for them anymore. They're adults now. They can make their own choices, but she's done letting them hurt him to satisfy their mother's need to constantly paint him as the bad guy._ "

Julio didn't read the rest of it out loud; everyone got the gist of it. The last texts that Rusty had sent were between two brothers, talking about the deeper dynamics of their family life. He frowned at Ricky's response. _I know she was furious about the wedding. My dad is a first class jerk most of the time, but I can't imagine treating him like that. I know Andy was a dick when they younger, but he's obviously changed. You're right. Let's introduce them to SB and Jack. It's late little bro. I'll see you next weekend. Andy likes football right? The Rams are playing in town. I'll take him to the game. I'm not Charlie, and we're not that close, but he doesn't deserve this crap. Besides, I'm just glad he's there to take care of mom. She could probably use a few hours without him hovering. We'll see. Let me know if you want to tag along. God, knowing mom, she'll probably want to go. Talk soon_!

They wouldn't be talking soon, though. They wouldn't be able to ever talk again. Julio shook his head. This was a nightmare, but one that he was just too familiar with. He knew what it was like to lose a brother, to have him cut down way too soon, to feel like the darkness had won. Julio passed the phone back to Nolan and walked over to stand near Morales. "How did he do it?"

The note on the wall behind them made it pretty clear who _he_ was. Morales glanced around the room. They had all seen the body before it was covered. He reached out and folded the sheet back. "Single, penetrating knife wound," Morales reported. "From the position and the trajectory, it severed the descending aorta. There are no signs of a struggle. No defensive wounds on the hands or arms. There's no splatter. He was dressed for bed," the doctor said. "I think you can tell the Commander that he probably never even knew what was happening to him."

"I don't think that's going to help much, doc." Julio looked down at the body. Blood had soaked the t-shirt. It was dried now, congealed where it had pooled. The sheets and blanket were also stained. The kid hadn't thrashed, he hadn't fought. Sanchez figured that Morales was probably right. There was cold comfort in that, and it didn't change a damn thing. He moved past the doctor and leaned down, bent close to the body. "I'm going to find him," he said quietly, "and I'm going to kill him. I promise you that. We won't let you down again."

When the detective moved away, Morales recovered the body. "We have everything we need from the scene. We're just… waiting now," he explained.

"The Commander's doctor is making sure that she's okay," Detective Paige told him.

"They're going to move the body after she leaves," Nolan said. "Flynn won't let us bring him out until she's gone. He didn't let her see him."

"He's not going to let her see him in a body bag either," Provenza stated. He took a deep breath and stood up. "None of us are. It's bad enough. We're not going to make it worse."

"I told Lieutenant Flynn that I would make sure he was cleaned up," Morales said, "you know, before…" She would have to see her son's body at some point. They couldn't prevent that. The only thing they could control now was how and when.

Sanchez frowned at them. "I understand keeping her out of here, but she's going to see this." He waved a hand at the bed. "We've got pictures and video. You don't really think we're going to be able to stop her from getting involved in this, do you? We remember who we're talking about, right? The Commander is in shock right now, but when that wears off, she will level this city looking for that son of a bitch."

"I won't let that happen." Andy spoke from behind them. He was standing in the door. He glared at Sanchez. "She lost her kid, I'm not going to let her lose herself too." Andy had already decided that he didn't care if she ended up hating him for it. He was not going to let Sharon destroy herself looking for vengeance instead of justice. He looked at Provenza. "You want to see if Patrice is ready? Let's get Sharon out of here so everyone can get to work."

Provenza nodded. "Yeah. I think it's probably been long enough." He walked out into the hall with his partner. A small, sad smile pulled at his lips. Patrice was walking toward them. Whether she had heard or just knew, he couldn't say. He met her halfway, before she could get near the room. "How is she?"

Patrice glanced at Andy as he joined them. "Devastated," she answered plainly. "She's in shock right now. Doctor Torres gave her something to keep her calm," her gaze moved to Andy. "He called in a prescription for a mild sedative. We'll pick it up on the way to our house. The doctor said it wouldn't cause any issues with her current medications. It won't make her too drowsy, so we'll have to make sure that she gets some rest. She should take it," she told Andy, "even if she says that she feels okay. It isn't going to completely suppress her emotions, but it will help, and it will keep her pressure and heart rate down when the shock wears off and she starts actually dealing with all of this."

"Yeah." Andy sighed. He shoved his hands into his pockets again. "Okay. We can do that. Think she's ready to let us move her now?" He wanted to get Sharon out of there, and the sooner the better.

"The sedative has had time to start working," Patrice told him. "I think she'll probably go now. Torres did say that he wants her to keep the appointment to see him this week. I think it's important that you make sure she goes."

He nodded and looked down. Right now, Andy was just thinking about getting her away from there. He didn't really care where they took her. Patrice thought she'd be more comfortable in their guest room, and she was probably right. Andy didn't really want to take her to a hotel. It was too impersonal. "I'll make sure she goes."

"Andy." Patrice laid a hand on his arm when he tried to step around her. She knew this wasn't easy for him either. It wasn't easy for any of them. "I gave Doctor Torres a list of your medications too. He prescribed something that you can take, it isn't habit forming. It might help." If he was going to take care of Sharon, he was going to have to take care of himself too. He had already had one heart attack. They didn't need him having another one while he was carrying the burden of stress for his family.

His jaw clenched. Tension coiled in his gut. Andy shook his head at her. "I'm fine, Patrice." He would call his sponsor later, after he was sure that Sharon was resting, when he had time to think about himself. "I need to get her out of here, and then we've gotta call her other kids. I've got to tell them what happened." How the hell he was supposed to break that news, he didn't know. Andy had made any number of notifications over the years, but this was different. This was their family, their kids.

"I know." Her smile was full of sympathy and understanding. "I understand all of it. She's lost a child, and there is nothing that will ever make that better. You can't protect her from her grief, Andy. She's going to feel this. She _has_ to feel this. The only thing that any of us can do is make sure that she comes out the other side of it alive. Let her be part of that phone call. She is their mother, Rusty was their brother. Let her take care of them, while you take care of her." If he smothered Sharon, he would only make it worse.

"Shit." Andy pulled a hand out of his pocket. He rubbed it over his face and into his hair. He knew she was right, but goddammit, how was he supposed to let Sharon do this? He just wanted to wrap her in a blanket, wrap himself around her, and block it all out. He wanted to protect her from what was going to come, but Patrice was right. That wasn't who Sharon was. She would probably feel better if she could take care of Ricky and Emily. They were going to need her, and she was going to need them. All he could do was keep an eye on all of them. "Alright. I'm hearing you," he told her. "Let's just get her out of here, okay? Morales needs to take Rusty…" His voice hitched and he looked way. "I just want to take her away from it. Can we do that? Can we worry about getting Sharon out of here, and then we'll worry about the rest. That's all I can handle right now."

"Yes." Provenza shared a look with his wife. It was too much for all of them. They would keep an eye on Flynn and Sharon, but right now, there was a lot to be done. One step at a time, and the first one was making sure that Sharon was gone before Morales put her son in a body bag and loaded him into the Coroner's van. "You and Flynn will take her back to the house. All of their meds were in Sharon's carryon bag, Flynn got those out, and tossed a couple of changes of clothes into a small duffel." They were releasing that from the scene, but it was all they could do for now. Sykes had logged it in.

"Let's go then." Andy walked past Patrice, and this time she let him go. He knew that Provenza would stay behind to work the scene as incident commander. Mason hadn't sent another division out, but then, Andy wasn't entirely sure that Mason knew his ass from a hole in the ground most of the time. If it weren't for Sharon telling him how to do his job, he was pretty sure the Assistant Chief would be lost. He couldn't think about that right now. Andy walked in to the living room and took a moment to study his wife. Doctor Torres was packing up his bag. Andy nodded to the other man as he rounded the end of the sofa. He lowered himself to the coffee table and leaned forward to lay his hands against his wife's legs. He waited for a moment, while the officers that were standing around in the living room and kitchen moved out of the condo or went down the hall. When they were alone, with only Patrice and Provenza hovering nearby, and Torres taking his time to pack up, Andy rubbed his hands up and down the sides of her calves. "Hey babe."

Her hands were folded together in her lap. Her head was lowered, gaze intent upon her fingers. The quiet rumble of his voice had her eyes lifting. Andy ground his teeth together. Her eyes were a dull, muddy color, more hazel than green. The light that had been in them that morning was gone. He had prayed that he would never have to see her like this. That just reminded him that he should have called Father Stan when he called her doctor. Andy cursed himself for forgetting. The priest would know what to say right now. He would call him when they left, he decided, and have the Priest meet them at Provenza's house. Andy lifted a hand and reached out to sweep her hair away from her face. He tucked it behind her ear and let his thumb trace the curve of her cheek. Sharon only blinked at him.

His brows drew together in a deep frown. Andy looked up at the Doctor. "I thought it was just a mild sedative? She looks like she's blissed out."

Torres's brows lifted in surprise at the terse note in his tone. He'd never known the Lieutenant to be anything but supportive and polite in his appointments with the man's wife. "It is. I didn't want to risk anything stronger with the medications that she's on right now. The fact is, the Commander is emotionally spent at the moment. That, along with the travel fatigue that you're _both_ feeling, and the sedative, has put her in a more relaxed state."

Sharon's hand moved. It covered his, where it still rested against her knee. "Andy." She drew his gaze back to her. "I am perfectly capable of speaking on my own behalf, thank you." She spoke gently, but clearly. Her thumb stroked the back of his hand.

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. "You sure?" He knew she wasn't all that steady at the moment. Her entire world had just been blown apart. She blinked and nodded again. Andy didn't care what the doctor said, or how she sounded. He was going with blissed out. "We're going to get out of here now. I guess Patrice told you that we're heading to their place for a couple of days?" He waited for her to respond. She blinked again and her chin lifted in what might have been a near nod. "We'll stop and pick up the meds the doc prescribed, maybe pick up something to eat." Her lip curled. He saw the disdain flash in her dull eyes. "I know, I'm not all that hungry either, but you know as well as I do that keeping up the diet is a big part of you getting better. You might not care right now, but I do, and so do a lot of other people."

She looked down again. Her eyes closed against the sting of tears. They didn't come quite as readily as they had before. Her eyes ached with the effort, while her lids felt heavy. Sharon drew a slow breath and let it out slowly. "Can we just go?" She knew that she wasn't going to be allowed in Rusty's room, and she wasn't entirely sure she had the stomach for it. She felt like she was only failing him again, but it was the truth. In the absence of her being strong enough to take care of him now, the best thing she could do was get out of the way so that their people could do their jobs.

Andy sighed. This was going to be the hard part. The shutting down and drawing in to herself, the guilt and self-loathing. His hands stroked her legs again. "Yeah, we can get out of here. Come on." He took her hands as he stood, and helped her up with him. Andy gave her hands a squeeze before letting go of them. He looked past her to where his partner was waiting. "Can you make sure that Mason knows to… keep this quiet for another hour or two?" He wanted to make sure that they called Ricky and Emily first. The last thing they needed right now was for Sharon's other kids to hear about all of this on the news.

"I already spoke to him," Provenza said. "We're not releasing any information until one of you gives us the okay."

"I'll call you," Patrice told her husband. She laid a hand on his shoulder and let her hand stroke the length of his arm. She didn't want Andy or Sharon having to worry about remembering to update him later. "Don't work too late, okay?" She was worried about him too. Patrice gave his arm a squeeze when he only nodded. She walked over and picked up the bag that Andy had packed, along with Sharon's purse.

Doctor Torres trailed along behind them as they left the condo. Thankfully, the officers lingering in the hall outside the condo didn't say much as they passed. Patrice didn't honestly think either of them would be able to handle that at the moment. It was a silent group that rode the elevator down to the lobby. Andy held Sharon's hand, but it was not until they left the condo and moved beyond the sympathetic glances of the police personnel on site that he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her against his side.

Sharon closed her eyes let him guide her toward the car. She wrapped her hand in his shirt and held on. It wasn't until they reached it and stopped that she opened her eyes again. She looked up at him, waiting while Patrice unlocked the doors and put their bag in the trunk. "We should call Father Stan," she told him.

"Yeah." He shrugged at her. "I was thinking about that earlier. We can call him on the way, if you want. He can meet us there. You can talk to him before we call the kids." His hands stroked her arms. "I can call him, Sharon." He didn't mind being the one.

She nodded. "Okay." She glanced away from him for a moment. Her mind felt muddled, but she knew that was the sedative. Sharon closed her eyes for a moment. "Andy…"

She was struggling. His thumb traced the curve of her cheek. "Yeah, sweetheart. What do you need?"

She rubbed her lips together before she opened her eyes and looked up at him. She shook her head. "I don't know how to do this," she whispered. Sharon couldn't think beyond the moment they were standing in. She couldn't imagine what the next five seconds were going to look like, or the next five minutes. It was all completely blank to her. She understood what they needed to do, the steps that came next, but she didn't know how to actually do them. How was she supposed to talk to her priest about burying her son, or tell her kids that their brother was dead? She didn't know how she was supposed to do anything but take her next breath.

"None of us do," he told her. "But I've got you. We all do." He couldn't tell her it would be okay. It wouldn't be. _Okay_ was a completely different concept for them now. He had no idea what it meant or how it was going to look. He just knew that he had to get her through the next five minutes. Andy opened the rear passenger door for her and held it. She folded herself into the car without another sound. He didn't know that he really cared all that much for these sedatives. They might be keeping her calm, and that might be good for her heart, but he wasn't sure it was really good for _her_. She was just too docile, and whatever else was going on, that just wasn't Sharon.

Andy closed the door when he was sure that she was settled. He drew a breath and let it out slowly before he walked around and got in beside her. As the car pulled away from the condo, he took her hand. The next five minutes were what they had to focus on. He knew that better than anyone. He lived his life hoping the next five minutes wouldn't be his last. The only thing was, the next five minutes could change everything.

 **-TBC-**


	3. Chapter 3

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** You are all fabulous!

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

"Hey mom! I'm glad you guys are back. How was the flight home?"

Ricky's voice came through the voice, sounding relaxed and cheerful. He didn't have any idea what was about to happen to him. At the sound of it, Sharon looked up and cast a desperate, almost panicked look at her husband. Her mouth opened, but there was no sound forthcoming.

They had just spent the last hour talking to Father Stan. After picking up Sharon's prescription and some takeout that had consisted of soup and salad that neither of them had the stomach to eat, they had gotten settled in at the Provenza home for the next few, difficult days. Andy had called Father Stan in the car. The Priest had joined them at the house a few minutes after they arrived. He sat in counsel and prayer with both of them, and Andy was starting to wonder if he was wrong about the sedative. As upset as she was right now, Sharon had cried again, but she wasn't hysterical or incoherent, not like she had been in those first, devastating seconds after he found Rusty.

Andy reached out and grasped her hand. His fingers curled around hers and he held on, squeezing tightly and grounding her in the moment. They had Ricky on speakerphone. Father Stan was still sitting with them, in case either of the kids needed him after they were notified.

"Mom?" Ricky's tone had changed to confusion. "Are you there? Hello?" A note of concern lay just beneath the surface.

When she looked away and lifted a trembling finger to her lips, Andy leaned forward. The phone was laying on the table in front of them. They were seated in the Provenzas' kitchen, fresh cups of tea in front of them while Patrice looked on, hovering, but not wanting to smother either of them. "Rick, hey, it's Andy," he said, before the young man could panic or hang up. "Um, what are you up to today?"

"I'm at work." Ricky frowned at his phone. "I've got a conference call in about forty-five minutes, but I've got some time to talk. Andy, is mom okay? You're calling on her phone." He didn't normally do that. Actually, Andy rarely called him at all. It was usually Rusty or their mother. His stepfather had texted a few times, and there was that one birthday surprise that he planned for their mom, but he had emailed because he didn't want her to know he was keeping something from her or to accidentally find out because she saw the texts on his phone.

Andy's thumb stroked the back of her hand. She was looking at him again. Her eyes were damp, and just a little desperate. "She's right here, Rick. Listen kid, we've got some news for you, and it's not great. I'm not going to try and skirt around it. It's been a pretty shit day, son."

Father Stan winced slightly at his choice of words, but a small smile tugged at his lips. That was Andy. He was often brusque, and some times a little crass. He didn't soft petal things. He wasn't wrong, either. It had been a really bad day. Stan met the other man's gaze and nodded. If Sharon wasn't feeling like she could do this, then it was good that he did. This was not news that should come from a stranger, and they were family. He had sat in counseling with Sharon and Andy prior to the wedding. They had met as a couple, as individuals, and they had come with their kids. Ricky had come, at least. It was harder for Emily to join them, but they had conferenced her in on a couple of occasions, and she was able to sit down with him the weekend of the wedding.

It was important that they all realize that this marriage was not only a matter of Sharon and Andy joining their lives together. They were all impacted. They were forming a family unit, and for the marriage to be strong, the family would need to embrace it. Andy was, in every sense of the word, going to be a partner to their mother. That meant that, while he was not there to replace their father, he would at times be a father figure in their lives. The spiritual connection that these two people were forming by entering into this union would extend to their children, at least the children who were willing to meet with him and accept their marriage. Father Stan had not, to date, spoken to either of Andy's children. They had been glaringly absent during the wedding planning. Andy hadn't wanted to talk to him about it. Sharon asked him not to press for an answer, but it was her partner she was concerned for, not his children.

"Okay." Ricky spoke a little haltingly. He stood from behind his desk and crossed his office to close the door. Andy wasn't that person that you could have on speakerphone. He really liked that about him. He was also the only one, inside his family, that called him _Rick_. His mother insisted on calling him _Ricky_ or _Richard_ if he was in trouble. The rest of the family followed that example. Andy, on the other hand, had overheard him make a call just once where he had identified himself in that way, and addressed it afterward.

" _Does your mother know that you'd rather be called something else?_ "

" _I never really thought about telling her. I've always been Ricky at home. It was Rick with my friends at school, or even my teachers and coaches when I was in high school._ " It had taken him that long to realize they would call him what he preferred, not what was on his enrollment records. He had been _Richard_ for so many years during his education, it hadn't really seemed important. It was one of his coaches that had caught on, and it sort of spread from there. He had flashed a crooked grin at the man who was, at the time, dating his mother. " _What did your mother call you?_ "

" _Good point_." It was his mother who had started the world to calling him _Andy_ , unless he was in trouble. He never really thought anything of it.

His stepdad started calling him Rick at that point. He appreciated it. It was like he had acknowledged that they were on friendly terms, but they weren't family. Not yet, anyway. Ricky hadn't realized at first how important that was, but he realized it later, when Andy moved in with his mom, and especially when he had the heart attack. This was not a simple or temporary relationship. This guy was going to be in their lives and he was making an effort to make sure they were okay with that. He wasn't really sure about all of it at that point, and that was mainly because he just didn't want his mom to get hurt. When he saw how happy she was, how much she actually cared about this guy, he finally understood just how important it was that someone was making that kind of effort with him and his siblings.

Ricky walked back around and took a seat behind his desk. "Go ahead, Andy. What happened?"

He looked at Sharon again. She shifted in her chair and leaned closer to the phone. "Ricky," she spoke quietly, emotion thick in her voice. "Honey, I'm afraid that I have some very bad news."

His fingers closed more tightly around his phone. He took a couple of shallow breaths. His heart dropped into his stomach, where it all churned and a tight knot began to grow. "Okay," he said quietly, just a little breathlessly. "Is it Dad?" Part of him always expected he would get this call. That one day his mother would call him to say that all of the drinking and bad decisions his father made had led to his end.

"No, baby." Her lips trembled again. Her voice cracked, grew breathy. Her eyes closed when tears filled them. She looked away and shook her head. Sharon felt a hand on her shoulder and reached up to clasp it. Patrice was there, stroking her other shoulder. She felt Andy squeeze the hand he held again and shook her head. She couldn't do this. She couldn't form the words.

Andy gripped the edge of the table with his free hand. He watched his wife struggle and felt emotion clog his throat. His jaw clenched tightly. There was an ache in his chest as he witnessed her pain and knew there was nothing that he could do to ease it. "It's not your dad," he said quietly. His own voice had grown thick, rasping like sandpaper as he forced air out of his lungs and made himself say the words. "It's Rusty. Something happened last night…"

Disbelief filled him. Ricky leaned against his desk. He stared at his computer, the lines of code that were open in front of him blurred together into unrecognizable lines. "I just talked to him last night," he blurted out. "We were making plans to get together next weekend. We didn't want to crowd you guys out the minute you were home, but I was going to come down and…"

"Rick." Andy cut through his rambling. He took a breath, or as much of one as he could manage past the tightening in his chest and the thick knot in his throat. "He's dead."

Sharon stood abruptly. If it had not been for Patrice behind her, the chair might have toppled over. She looked desperately around the room for a moment before she stumbled away from them. She pushed through the side door and out to the back yard. Sharon gasped for air but couldn't seem to get enough. The world was spinning around her. She felt her stomach clench, then roll alarmingly. She stumbled across a small expanse of lawn and leaned against a tall, wooden fence. She bent forward, and was only vaguely aware of an arm wrapping around her middle as she heaved. She was sick at the sound of those words, sick at the thoughts running through her mind, sick at the knowledge that she would never see her beautiful boy again.

A hand swept her hair back. Sharon didn't really know who it was. She didn't exactly care either. She tried to breathe, but even the very air that was drawn into her lungs made her stomach pitch and churn. She felt the arm around her waist move, and someone rub her back. A soft voice finally revealed who had come to comfort her. Sharon braced her hands against the fence and rested her forehead against her arm.

"I keep hoping that I'll wake up," she said, voice hitching and broken by the need to draw air and hope it would quiet the nausea that was trying to fell her, "but it doesn't happen, and the nightmare just gets worse."

"I know." Her fingers stroked the other woman's back, the movement steady and sure. Patrice shook her head. "I'd tell you it gets better, but it really doesn't." She let her gaze wander across the backyard. "You just wake up one day and realize that breathing is a little easier than it was the day before. The memories will make you smile, and you don't cry at the mention of a name." She sighed quietly. "Losing someone we love is always hard, but we aren't meant to outlive our children. It isn't the natural order of things."

Sharon straightened. She slipped her glasses off and wiped her fingers across her eyes. She lifted her face toward the sky and took another breath. "How did you do it?" Her arms dropped to hang limply at her sides, with her glasses clasped loosely in her hand. "How did you survive this?"

Patrice folded her lips together. She shook her head. These were thoughts she hadn't really focused on in a long time. Even Louie didn't know the entire story. He knew the basics of her history, but there had never been any need to go into any great depth. Other than knowing it happened, they didn't talk about it. That time in her life was far removed from who she was now, who they were together. "When Christina died, I didn't know how I would ever breathe again, much less get up and go about my day. I didn't want to talk to anyone, or go to work, or even to church. I was angry. It wasn't fair. That girl was nothing but light from the day she was born. She got pregnant with Keisha when she was nineteen. It didn't slow her down. She knew what she wanted. I did everything I could think of to talk her out of following in her father's footsteps. That girl was as stubborn as I am, twice as stubborn as he was. I knew the reality. I was a cop's wife. Losing Christina was bad enough. Losing her to the job didn't make it any easier. She died doing what she loved, what she felt like she was meant to do. When you're a mother you don't care about that. All that matters is that you're putting your baby in the ground." Patrice shrugged. "I had a man that loved me, though, and he was hurting too. We had Keisha to take care of. Her dad was never in the picture, and she was only eight. She didn't understand what was going on, not really. So I got up, and I took care of her, and Joe took care of us both. I went to work, and I went to church, and one day I realized that I could think about Christina without feeling like the pain of it would split me in two."

Sharon turned away from her. She took a few steps away from the fence. She walked back toward the house and leaned against the side of it. She folded her arms around herself and stared at the ground underneath her feet. "He was mine to protect. I didn't do that."

There were no words that she could offer that would make those thoughts go away, but Patrice didn't get the opportunity to try. They both looked over as the door opened again. Father Stan stepped out into the yard. He walked toward them; his sympathetic gaze was focused on Sharon.

The priest thought it might be the best to give the two women a minute before he joined them. It was good that he stayed. He stopped Andy from rushing out behind her, but it was obvious the other man was torn. He wanted to be there for her, but they both knew that Sharon would prefer it if he stayed behind and continued speaking to Ricky. Stan left him to do that while he checked on Sharon. His hands lifted, spread before him. The instinct in these situations was to ask how the other person was doing, but he knew that she was heartsick. "I can promise these are the hardest calls that you will ever have to make," he told her. He recognized her look for what it was, guilt, and misery. "Your reaction is not without reason."

"I wish I believed that." Sharon rolled her eyes away from him. "I feel like I'm continuing to fail them all." She sighed. "Andy is right. It has been a shit day."

Father Stan could count on one hand the number of times that he had heard Sharon swear in the more than two decades that he had known her. "A very long one too," he reminded her. They had left Dublin when it was just after midnight in Los Angeles. Their flight home, according to Andy, had taken them through Chicago, where their connecting flight had been delayed due to rain. All of those details were really superfluous though. All that really mattered was that they were exhausted, and the emotional upheaval of their loss was adding to that feeling.

"Hm." She acknowledged the truth of his words with a low, near grunt. "Yes." Sharon looked past him to the door. "I should go back inside. I need to make sure that Ricky is okay."

"Andy has him," the priest said warmly. "You chose well, Sharon. He is taking care of your son."

"He chose me," she said quietly. Sharon pushed away from the wall of the house with a quiet breath and walked back inside.

Without her glasses on, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the change in light. She narrowed them as she gazed across the kitchen. Andy was still seated at the table, shoulders hunched as he bent over the phone in front of him. When he looked up at her, the pain and worry in his eyes made her breath catch. She could hear her son speaking, hear the quiver of grief and pain in his voice as he made Andy promise that he would take care of her until Ricky could join them. She moved across the small space and laid a hand on his shoulder. Sharon leaned in to Andy's slide and let her hand stroke across his shoulders to rest against the back of his neck. She could feel the tension that was knotting them. He lifted an arm to loop around her hips, and she felt the tremor in his hand when it came to a stop against her flank. Her hand covered his and their fingers twined together.

Sharon held his gaze. Her pain was his. He would carry her grief on his shoulders if she would but just let him. "Ricky, I'd like you to listen to Andy," she spoke, voice low, and not altogether steady. "I really do not want you traveling tonight. I understand your need to be here, and I appreciate it, more than you know. I want you close…" At the same time, there was a small voice in the back of her mind reminding her that it might be dangerous. She pushed it aside. Stroh had what he wanted now. There was no longer anything to keep him in Los Angeles. The thick knot in her stomach clenched painfully again. Sharon pressed her lips together. She made a low, pained sound, but tried to suppress it.

Andy's arm tightened around her. He gripped her hand a little more securely. "You can get a flight out tomorrow morning," he said. "We still need to call your sister. Your mother needs to rest, she won't do that if she's thinking about the two of you traveling tonight." Andy quirked a shoulder at her, it was true, and he didn't having any problem saying it.

Ricky sighed. "I understand. I don't like it, but I understand." He grew silent for a moment. "Andy, maybe you should conference Emily in. I appreciate you calling me first. I'd like to help you tell her."

"Ricky, this is Father Stan," The priest spoke up before the other two could respond. "Perhaps we can give your mother and Andy just a few minutes before we make that call." He thought they could both use a break.

"Yeah." Andy nodded gratefully at the priest. "But we'll call you back when… when we do it." He stroked his wife's side. "Maybe you can send Emily a text. Just tell her that we're home, and we're going to call."

"Okay. I can do that." Ricky paused for a moment. "Mom…."

"I know, honey. I love you. Give us ten minutes," she told him.

"I love you too."

Andy ended the call on that note. He didn't have to tug her toward him. He leaned back in his chair as she folded herself into his lap. His hand moved into her hair and gripped the back of her head while she wrapped her arms around him. They held tightly to one another. " _I had a man that loved me_." Sharon heard Patrice's words echoing in her mind. She would try to remember that in the hours and days to come.

Patrice and Father Stan left the couple alone in the kitchen to regroup before making the next difficult call. They needed to find comfort in one another, and a few minutes later, when they were both feeling… if not exactly stronger, then a little less like falling apart, they left the kitchen. Sharon went to freshen up after being ill, while Andy stepped out to get some air.

That next call was a lot harder than the first one had been. They had known that it would be. It was why Sharon wanted to call Ricky first. Emily fell apart on them. Listening to her daughter cry and being unable to hold her was more than Sharon could stand. Ricky was a calming voice in the storm, and Andy realized what it was about that young man that always made him so easy to relate to. Ricky was undoubtedly his mother's son. Emily was the oldest, but it was Ricky whose personality was the most like Sharon's. He was able to comfort his sister, even from miles away, and Andy wondered just how often that had occurred in the past.

It was decided that both of them would make the trip home the following morning. Ricky also offered to take a later flight. He told his sister to book hers and send him the information. He would meet her at the airport and they would drive across town together. Afterward, with those terrible calls finished, Sharon sat with Father Stan for a little while. The two of them talked quietly while Andy made her a fresh cup of tea and heated up the soup they picked up earlier.

Later, after the Priest had gone, and the two of them had taken turns in the guest bathroom, finally showering off their very long day, Andy laid down with Sharon until she fell into a fitful sleep. The sedative that Doctor Torres had given her ensured that she would sleep, despite her emotional state.

Andy didn't have the same luxury, and he didn't want to risk waking her with his own restless state, so he left her alone in the guest room. He called his sponsor, and made a pot of coffee because he was craving something stronger than tea. Andy knew that he should go to a meeting, but he was more concerned about Sharon waking up while he was gone than he was about himself. He decided that he could put it off for a little while, and talking to his sponsor helped.

By the time that night had fallen, Andy had been awake for almost twenty-four hours. It had been long enough that waiting a few more hours to go to bed wouldn't make much difference, so he decided to wait for Provenza to get home.

It was close to midnight before he finally pulled his Department issued Explorer into the driveway beside his wife's car. Provenza wasn't really surprised to see Flynn sitting on the front step, waiting for him. He sighed as he pulled his tired, aching body out of the vehicle and walked toward him.

"Shouldn't you be getting some rest right now?"

The usual grumpy tone only made Andy snort. "I will at some point." His arms were draped across his knees. He rolled his shoulders and watched his partner sit down on the step beside him. "So what do we know?"

"We are too damned old to be doing this job," he drawled. "That is what I know." Provenza shook his head and looked at him. "I wondered what the day would look like, when I had finally seen too much. Now I wish I didn't know." He lowered his head and looked at the concrete steps that led up to his porch. He had joined Morales in the morgue for the autopsy report. Nolan and Cami had offered to do it, since they were the least familiar with Rusty. Provenza hadn't allowed it. He had gone, and he was a little surprised when it was Buzz that insisted on going with him. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. Buzz really did have the makings to be a good detective some day, but Provenza had always hoped they could dissuade him, and failing that, protect him from the worst of this job. He wanted to keep him from being jaded by the darkness they saw everyday, because somehow, miraculously, despite how long he had worked with them, Buzz still believed that the world was fundamentally good. Provenza wondered how much longer he would continue to think that way.

"You're not wrong about that." Andy shook his head. "As much as it pains me to say it."

Provenza grunted at him. Their usual banter was lacking. That was to be expected. "I don't know if it ever occurred to Chief Mason that he should take us off this case, but I made sure he wouldn't before Fritz could plant the idea in his head. Our illustrious Pope owed me one. I've been sitting on it for a long time." It wasn't the kind of favor that one called in for a promotion, or even a transfer. It was bigger than that. Officers didn't stay in the department as long as he had without learning a lot of things about a lot of people, and earning quite a few favors along the way. This one he saved. "I made a phone call. Unless we manage to completely screw the pooch, this case belongs to Major Crimes."

"She'll appreciate that," Andy said quietly. "Even if she won't be able to say it, it's going to matter." He scrubbed a hand over his face. He felt like he had been awake for a solid week. "That doesn't answer the question. You know that, right?"

"Yeah, I know." Provenza sighed again. "I was hoping to put it off for a while. Morales is pretty sure that he never knew what was happening. There was no evidence of any struggle. Once his aorta was severed, it was basically over. It looks like he was asleep when it happened, so Morales is probably right. That doesn't really help much, but it's something. We found a single fingerprint. It was on the wall next to the note he left. Almost like he placed it there on purpose, to taunt us. Or maybe it was just to make sure we wouldn't doubt who was responsible. It was definitely Stroh."

"Part of me was actually hoping it wasn't." Andy tipped his head back and stared at the sky. "It might have been easier if it was just… random. That doesn't make a lot of sense."

"No, it does." Provenza shrugged. "She's going to blame herself either way, but I know what you mean. We pulled the security cameras too. We didn't get a clear image of him, but the finger print left no doubt. He was in and out in ten minutes. That backs up Morales's theory too. Stroh didn't linger, he didn't have to."

"Hell of a thing." Andy scuffed the tip of his shoe against the concrete step. He was sitting there in a t-shirt and his pajama pants, but managed to remember his shoes before coming outside. He lifted his coffee cup. It was barely lukewarm now, but it was better than what he _could_ be drinking.

"Hell of a day," his partner replied. "We don't have any leads, but we're pulling everything. He's probably long gone, but that won't stop us from trying to find him. Hobbs is going to come by in the morning. I convinced her to wait. How are Ricky and Emily?" Truth be told, the DDA hadn't taken it well. The kid irritated the crap out of her, but as with most of them, he had grown on her.

"They're both pretty messed up. We talked them out of flying out here tonight. They're both coming in tomorrow. I'm afraid your house is about to be overrun by Raydors." He slanted a look at his partner. "Sharon isn't going to want to be separated from them once they get here. Patrice offered to put them up in the den."

Provenza nodded. "The couch folds out, and we've got a rollaway bed that we can put in there too." He snorted. "I never thought I would see the day that _my_ house was taken over by the Raydor clan. I'm blaming you for that," he drawled, clearly meaning the guests he was going to have. "You just had to start calling her _Sharon_."

Andy was silent for a moment. He never thought they'd end up here. "I'd give it all back," he said quietly, "trade every minute of it… if doing that would keep today from happening, keep her from having to go through this, I'd gladly go back and walk away." He put his cup down on the step beside him and clasped his hands together. "It's going to get worse."

"Yeah," Provenza replied, "I know." He stretched his legs out in front of him. His back was killing him. He wanted to go inside and fall into bed for a few hours, or a few days. "Did you call your sponsor?"

"After Sharon fell asleep," he nodded. "We'll see how tomorrow goes. If I can't get to a meeting, I'll call him again." He looked over at his partner. It meant something, having people in his life that gave a damn about whether or not he picked up a bottle. Andy told himself he wouldn't do that to Sharon, but it was nice to know that he had some backup. "We are definitely too damn old for this," he said.

"Only the good die young, Flynn." Provenza groaned as he pulled himself up. He huffed a sigh and looked down at the other man. "You and I get to live forever and watch the whole damn thing go straight to hell."

Andy lifted his coffee cup. He drew himself up, groaning, but not quite as loudly as the other man had done. He rolled his shoulders again and then he toasted Provenza with the now cold liquid in his cup. "Halle-fucking-luja."

"Hell of a thing," Provenza said, echoing his partner's previous sentiments. He reached out and pushed the front door open. As much as he'd like to continue sitting around, running his mouth with his friend, he was going to go and stretch out beside his wife and try to forget this day for a little while.

With a sigh, Andy followed him back inside. "Hell of a day," he muttered. "Hell of a goddamned day."

 **-TBC-**

* * *

 **Additional Note:** I only vaguely remembered Patrice's history when I was writing this. I had to go back and watch **Episode** **3x12: Party Foul** to fill in the blanks. All they actually mention is that she's a widow, her late husband was also a cop, and she had raised her granddaughter Keisha since she was 8. Since we don't really know anything beyond that, I made up the rest.


	4. Chapter 4

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** If you're still here... I adore you. Thank you for letting me get these feels out.

* * *

 **Chapter 4**

Andy slept in fits and starts that night. He startled awake every time he felt Sharon move, worried that she would need him. It was the sound of her quiet sigh that woke him just after sunrise. Andy's eyes blinked open. He rolled to his side and found her lying beside him, staring at the ceiling above them. He laid a hand against her stomach. His thumb stroked in slow, soothing motions. "Hey."

She blinked slowly. She felt groggy, and had some vague memory of her doctor listing that as one of the side effects of the sedative he had given her. Her eyes closed again. She exhaled a slow breath. "It wasn't a dream, was it?"

"No," he rumbled quietly, "it wasn't. I'm sorry. I wish it was." He watched her brows draw together and her lips begin to tremble. He ached to see her like this, and more than that, he felt helpless. There was nothing at all that he could do for her. There were no words to comfort her, and all he knew was that he would take all this pain and let it be his, if only to spare her.

This hurt went deep. It was a sharp, throbbing ache that made her breath catch. A thick, low moan sounded in her throat. She rolled toward him, a hand pressed against her middle, just beneath her breasts. She drew her knees toward her chest, while her mouth opened in a soundless, miserable scream. She pressed her face into the mattress beneath them and let the tears come. It was a hot torrent of moisture that poured from her eyes. "Oh god. _Rusty_ …"

She curled in on herself and he was powerless to take her pain away. Andy gathered her close. He stroked her hair back with one hand and gently rubbed her back with the other. "I've got you," he murmured quietly. He wouldn't fill her ears with false platitudes. He could only hold her while she cried for the child that she had lost. His eyes closed against the sting of his own tears, but he forced them back. He swallowed his own pain and continued to offer whatever comfort he could.

She curled a hand in his shirt. Her entire body seemed to contract and spasm with the force of her grief. It was unbearable this pain, and unbelievable that this was happening. "I should have been here." When Sharon lifted her head to look at him, her eyes were tortured. "I should have protected him."

There it was, Andy thought, there was the guilt that was simmering beneath the surface. He wondered how long it would take before she gave voice to it. He knew there was no reasoning with it, these emotions were not rational and he knew that her responses would not be reasonable. That wouldn't stop him from trying. Andy couldn't just lie there and allow her to be miserable. "Nothing would've changed, Sharon. Except we'd all be dead, probably." He swept her hair back from her face. His thumbs smoothed tears from her cheeks. "Stroh was in and out of our place in ten minutes. Rusty was asleep, babe. He didn't feel it. He didn't even know. The lock was picked. Stroh came in the middle of the night, if we'd been at home, we'd have been in bed too. There's no guarantee that he would have left us alive, and even if he did, there was no struggle, no indication we'd have even known what was happening. Sharon, this isn't your fault."

She curled her hands around his wrists. "I was on a plane, flying over an ocean, while my son was dying." She shoved his hands away from her and rolled away from him, off the bed. "Returning from a trip that we never should have taken. If I had been here…"

"All three of us would probably be in the morgue right now. Emily and Ricky would be planning a funeral for their mother, along with their little brother," he told her. Andy sat up in the bed. He scrubbed a hand over his face and into his hair while he watched her move around the room. She jerked their overnight bag open and began pulling items out of it. "Babe, you're not responsible for this."

"We'll never know, will we?" Sharon took the change of clothes that he had packed for her, and her toiletry bag and turned to look at him. Her eyes flashed, filled with grief and loathing. "I should have been here, Andy. I don't know if we could have stopped it, but I do know that none of this was meant to happen. It should have been me. I was always prepared for that."

"Yeah?" Andy leaned forward. "Because you think that having your family put you in the ground is some magical fix for everything? It wouldn't change a damn thing. It certainly wouldn't be easier on anyone." Frustration leaked in to his tone. He tried to hold it back, but the very idea of losing her terrified him. He knew what that would do to him, and he knew would it would do to her kids. She might want to trade places with Rusty, hell, he would trade places with the kid if he could, but trading one pain for another didn't make any of them hurt any less. "You'd be dead, Stroh would be gone, and the rest of us would still be right here, wondering what we could've done different."

"It changes everything, Andy." She shrugged at him, her voice cracked. "It changes me."

He clenched his teeth together as she left the room. The door across the hall closed and he leaned back. Andy pressed the heels of his hand against his eyes and sighed. "Dammit." That couldn't have gone any worse if he specifically tried to screw it up. He groaned as he stood, body tired and aching. He threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, used the half bath near the laundry room and finally ventured into the kitchen in search of coffee. Patrice was seated at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of her own. Her brows lifted in a silent question, but Andy just shook his head. "Provenza already gone?"

"Yes. He left a little while ago." She wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and watched his movements around her kitchen. He was even more familiar with this house than she was, and that was even more reason that he and Sharon should stay with them for the next day or two. It was a familiar place, and not the cold walls of a hotel. "Louie said that he told you where they were with everything. He's going to call if there are anymore updates, but he will check in around noon, regardless."

"That's good." They had left their phones on the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room. Andy unplugged his and carried it with him to the table, where he sat down with his coffee. He sighed as he opened it and scrolled through his messages. He had tried to call both of his kids the day before. Neither had answered. Nicole had at least returned the text message that he needed to speak to them. " _Busy today, I'll try to call later_." He shook his head and went to the next message. Ricky had sent him Emily's itinerary, along with his own. He looked up when Sharon came in to the kitchen. She had changed and brushed her hair, but she hadn't bothered with makeup. Her hair was pulled back and secured in a clip. Her eyes were red, but underneath her scrubbed face, she was still incredibly pale. Andy watched her take down a coffee mug and fill it. She wasn't supposed to have the caffeine, but neither was he. A few cups of coffee weren't going to stop their hearts, he decided. "Emily took the six-thirty out of JFK. She will be here in a couple of hours. Ricky is landing in an hour. He's going to get a car and pick her up." Andy looked at his phone again, "he sent the info to both of us."

"Okay." She spoke quietly, voice still thick and low, raw with emotion. Sharon stared out the window over the sink for a moment. The Provenzas didn't have much of a yard, or even a view. She lifted the cup to her lips and took a long sip of the strong, dark coffee. After another moment she turned around. She walked over and leaned against the back of his chair. Her hand swept over his hair. It was sticking up at all ends. Sharon bent down and let her lips touch his temple. "I'm sorry." It wasn't his fault that she was hurting, and he was the last person that she wanted to blame, but the feelings were there. She was blaming both of them, and didn't know how to stop.

"I know." Andy looked up at her. He saw the misery in her gaze and gave her a small smile. "I know, Sharon." There was nothing she could ever do that would make him not love her. He would do whatever it took to get her through this, and if raging at him was how she did it, he could take it.

Her hand fell to his shoulder. She gave it a squeeze before she moved to sit in the chair beside him. "Tell them not to stop and get lunch. We'll arrange something when they get here." She folded her hands around her cup. "We should think about getting something in to you right now. Your morning meds are going to make you sick if you don't eat." One of them, and she couldn't remember which one at the moment, had to be taken with food.

"I'll eat if you do," Andy flashed a smug look at her. Neither of them was exactly hungry, but it was more important to keep her eating by his way of thinking.

Patrice sat back in her chair and watched the two of them. She had seen more than one stare-off between the pair since meeting them a few years ago. She lifted her coffee cup and hid her smile behind it. They could have an entire conversation without uttering a single sound. It was a feeling that she knew well. She had been lucky enough to love two men in that way, and to still have the second one. Patrice suppressed a laugh when Sharon finally rolled her eyes at her husband and silently conceded his point. "What would you like for breakfast?" She rose easily from her seat and walked toward the refrigerator.

"Oh Patrice," Sharon shook her head. "You don't need to cook for us. Really, you've already been incredibly generous allowing us to stay here. Andy and I can manage."

"Yeah," Andy put his coffee and his phone aside and stood. "Sit back down, let me take care of it." He looked down at Sharon. "In fact, we'll order lunch, and we can get dinner too. Really, Patrice, we're not here so you can wait on us."

"No," she said at length. Patrice smiled at him as she stood, a hand resting on the door of the fridge. "You are here so that your friends can help you through a difficult time." Her gaze moved between the two of them, and finally settled on Andy. "I may not be able to make the world make sense for you again, but I can keep you fed. I can make sure that you have a comfortable place to rest your heads, and that your kids will feel as at home here as they would anywhere else." She pointed a finger at him. "So you are going to sit down and tell me what it is that you would like for breakfast, Andy Flynn, and I don't want to hear another word out of you about it. For that matter, we will not be feeding those kids takeout, the least we can do is make sure they have a home cooked meal while they help their mother take care of everything she's going to have to take care of. Understood?"

Andy put his hands up in surrender. "Understood." He fought the urge to smile as he sat down again. He turned to face the table again and picked his phone back up. "I think she might be bossier than you are," he muttered to his wife.

A small, weak smile touched her lips. It didn't last more than a second. Sharon reached out and touched his hand. "Honey, try not to insult our hostess while putting your foot in your mouth." Her hand stroked his forearm. She turned in her chair to watch Patrice move around the kitchen. "Thank you," she said, "truly. We appreciate everything that you are doing for us right now."

"You would do the same," Patrice reminded her. "Now, breakfast?" She prompted again, and tilted her head while she waited for a response.

Sharon's lips pursed. She cast a look at her husband. "Do you have egg whites and wheat toast?" When he groaned, she smiled again. He had gotten used to a much healthier diet when he moved in with her, but after his heart attack, and now with her heart condition, all of the little ways that he could cheat on his diet were gone.

"As long as it's not cream of wheat and vegan bacon," he shot back, reminding her of the first time she tried to make him a _heart healthy_ breakfast. The cereal had been bland and the bacon substitute was terrible. They decided to stick to fresh fruit and other low fat options after that.

"I think we can arrange a healthy enough breakfast without going to that extreme," Patrice told them. She pulled out a container of egg whites and a package of turkey bacon. She also retrieved a package of fresh spinach leaves. "We will have omelets and fruit, and some whole grain toast. The bacon is good for you, and it isn't vegan, I promise. I was able to get Louie to switch to turkey, but I can only push that man so far."

Andy exchanged a look with Sharon before he grinned at Patrice's back. "Yeah, but does Provenza know that it's turkey?" When she only cast a smirk at him from over her shoulder, Andy lowered his head and chuckled quietly. "Secret is safe with us." He tossed his phone toward the middle of the table and stood up. "I'm going to go and finish getting ready for this day." He leaned over and kissed the top of Sharon's head. "If Nicole or Charlie call, just let it go to voicemail."

"Hmm." Sharon hummed in response. If either of his children bothered to call, she would speak to them herself. That his son and daughter were continuing to be difficult during a time of extreme family crisis was troubling. Just now, just in this moment, and even if she would feel terrible about it later, Sharon didn't mind allowing them to be an outlet for some of the anger that she was feeling. "Go ahead. I'll be okay here," she told him. She watched him go, and appear to hesitate for a moment before finally leaving the kitchen. Sharon stood with her coffee and walked over to lean against the counter near where Patrice was working on breakfast. "I may need you to help me convince him that he can leave me alone long enough to go to a meeting."

"We can arrange that." Patrice glanced over at her. "Before I do that, I think you're going to have to come clean with me." She gave Sharon a knowing look. "I was there with Doctor Torres yesterday, Sharon. I know which medications you're on. Andy was concerned enough to call your physician, who happens to be a cardiologist, to be on site with you. Louie knows that something is up now, but he doesn't have all the specifics. You aren't only on medical leave because of exhaustion and an adverse reaction to the Influenza Virus, are you?"

Sharon winced. They hadn't set out to hide her condition from everyone, but she was intensely private. She also wasn't sure how it was going to play out with her job. Chief Mason seemed to be an open minded and understanding individual, but he was also ambitious. He had definite ideas about the future of the LAPD and the role that her division was to play in his vision. There was also the fact that Sharon hadn't wanted to worry anyone. Her children and Andy were worried enough. She studied the contents of her coffee cup for a moment. "No," she said quietly, "it isn't only exhaustion and the flu, although that was a big part of it. I have acute myocarditis, caused by the flu virus. My heart took a beating. The damage isn't too severe, and Doctor Torres believes that we caught it early enough. In addition to the heart medications that I am on, I've also had to change my diet, and make some exercise adjustments. As long as we can regulate my pressure and heart rhythms, and I don't work myself into a more serious condition, there is no reason that I won't recover fully. I was fortunate that I didn't have a heart attack, but many of the changes that I've had to make are similar to what Andy had to do after his. My heart was enlarged and it was beating irregularly, which was causing the dizzy spells and worsening fatigue. As I understand it, I'm very lucky." She offered a small, apologetic smile. "We didn't want to worry anyone since my prognosis was so good. We told the kids, but that was it."

"Sharon." Patrice shook her head as she cut up fresh tomatoes to add to the omelets, along with the spinach. "You don't need to justify yourself to me. I just want to make sure that you are okay. No one wants to lose you. I know it doesn't help right now, and it doesn't feel very important compared to everything else that you're going through, but there are some people that need you. I just happen to have a little bit of experience with these kinds of things," she added, not unkindly, "so if I need to keep a closer eye on you, I don't mind doing that."

Sharon looked down again. She was deeply touched. It was unusual for her to be on the receiving end of so much care and concern. She was the one who usually took care of others. "I am…" Sharon rolled her eyes, because _okay_ was far from how she felt at the moment. "Physically I am fine," she said instead. "I've been doing everything that I can to stay that way. I know that the children are worried, and Andy…" Sharon trailed off again. "I am worried about what this is doing to him." Now she had even more reason to worry. She would rather everyone kept a closer eye on him, if she was truthful about it. She pushed those thoughts aside and offered a grateful smile. "Thank you. This is…" She stopped speaking and shook her head when emotion had her voice catching. Her eyes welled with tears but she quickly blinked them back. "What you and the Lieutenant are doing for us means a lot," she managed after a moment. "More than I can say."

Patrice smiled at her. "Well, that is what friends are for. I think it goes a little deeper than that in our case." She chuckled quietly as she added the tomatoes and spinach to the egg whites and poured the mixture into a flat skillet. "When I started dating Louie he was very careful to keep me away from most of his friends, and you and I both know that his friends happen to include the people that he works with. When I moved in with him, it wasn't so much the fact that I had to realize why that was, but _he_ did. I had already been a cop's wife. I knew full well what I was getting myself into. You don't just marry the man, you marry the whole bunch. In our case, we didn't only marry the men, we married their partners too."

"Yes we did." That was something that Sharon began to understand after she and Andy began dating, but it was not until he had moved in with her that she fully comprehended that it wasn't only Andy she was getting. She was getting Provenza too. "If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought that I would be standing here today, having breakfast in the Lieutenant's home, while waiting for my children to arrive, I would have denied even the remote possibility." Her smile slowly faded as her gaze drifted away. She was reminded just why she and the Lieutenant had finally managed to get over the last hurdles to having a decent working relationship, and a close friendship. It was Rusty. The lieutenant's help had been invaluable at a time when Rusty had needed more than her in his life. This time when the tears came, Sharon bowed her head and covered her eyes.

Patrice removed the skillet from the burner and shut the stove off before she turned to the other woman. She gathered her close while she cried. "He was a beautiful boy, and he was well loved," she murmured.

"I just want him back," she whispered brokenly. She allowed herself to be held and after a moment's hesitation, she relaxed against the other woman. "I didn't have enough time."

"No you didn't, but the time that you had mattered." She rocked her from side to side for a moment. Patrice pulled back and tipped her chin up. "He was happy, and he felt loved. He wasn't afraid, and he wasn't hurting. He didn't want for anything. As parents, we can't do any better than that. The rest is out of our control."

"It isn't fair," she replied. "He came so far." All she could think of was the boy that was so proud of having graduated from college, and compare him to the frightened child who didn't even believe that he deserved to graduate from high school. "I just… I miss him."

"Of course you do." Patrice smiled sadly at her. "You always will." Her hands moved to Sharon's shoulders and she gave them a squeeze. "Come on," she drew her toward the table again. There was a napkin holder in the center of the old butcher-block piece. She gathered a thin stack of napkins and handed them to the other woman.

"Thank you." Sharon wiped her eyes. Her attention was drawn to the sound of one of their cell phones vibrating. She reached out and turned it toward her. "This is Nicole." Her lips pursed for a moment. "I think I'm going to go ahead and take this." Andy might have suggested that it go to voicemail, but there was no telling when either of his children would bother to call him again. Sharon picked up the phone and answered it. "Nicole, hello, it's Sharon. Can you hold, just for a minute?" Before the young woman could answer she pressed the phone against her chest. "Thank you," she said again. "I think we are inordinately blessed to have you with us right now."

Patrice returned her smile. She was only happy that she could help. She touched the other woman's arm again before returning to the stove. "I hope you'll still feel that way after Andy eats his egg whites and wheat toast."

Sharon snorted quietly. She shook her head as she took the phone and stepped out into the backyard with it. When she was alone, she inhaled deeply. Here we go, she thought. Sharon lifted the phone to her ear. "Nicole, I'm sorry about that, I was in the middle of something. Your father is a little busy at the moment. He has been trying to reach you."

"Yes I know." Nicole sounded a little irritated. She was frustrated with having to wait. "Things are a little busy right now, Sharon. Can you tell dad that I called? I'll try to reach him later, but I have a lot going. Everything is just so crazy," she explained.

Sharon hummed in response. "Yes, it really is." She rubbed her lips together. She walked toward the center of the yard and stood there. "Nicole, I'll pass the message along, but you should know, we are incredibly busy right now too. I'm not certain when he will be able to call you back. Your father just wanted to make sure that you knew Rusty died last night." Her throat almost closed as she said the words. It was all still so unreal to her, so unfathomable. "I understand," she continued, choosing to power through, "that you've chosen not to have any ties to this side of your family, but we felt it would be more appropriate for you to hear about your stepbrother from one us rather than learning about it from the news." Anger, that was something else that she felt. It was bitter and hot in her belly. Andy only wanted to notify them that a member of their family had died, but they were insistent on taking even that away from him. Sharon decided she had better continue before she became too emotional, and so she added, "I'm sure that Andy would appreciate hearing from you. I know that you aren't especially concerned, but he was close to your stepbrother, and this is a difficult time for him."

"I…" Nicole didn't know what to say. It was the last thing that she expected to hear. She thought they were going to suggest another family dinner, to try and bring everyone together now that they were married. Shock filled her, and with it, a good deal of shame. She had been short, even rude, and now she was hearing from her stepmother that the woman's son had just died. She remembered all the things her father had told them about Sharon and Rusty, and she knew firsthand just how close they were. "God Sharon, I'm so sorry. I didn't… I thought…" Nicole stuttered for something more meaningful to say. "Is there anything that we can do?"

"Yes there is," she said, this time a little more gently. "The next time your father calls you, answer your phone. Now if you will excuse me, I'm expecting my elder two children to arrive. We have a lot to do, I'm sure that Andy will relay any details about the memorial service to you."

"Of course." Nicole swallowed hard. "Sharon, I am really sorry."

"Thank you." She hung up the phone before she could say anymore. Sharon let her arm drop to hang limply at her side. She lifted her face to the sun when the tears threatened again. She took several calming breaths before she finally turned, intending to go back inside. Sharon drew up short. Andy was leaning against the side of the house. "How long?"

"Long enough." He walked toward her. Andy stopped in front of her. He took the phone out of her hand and put it in his pocket. "I told you to let it go to voicemail because I knew that it would upset you if you spoke to her." Andy swept a lock of hair away from her face. His fingers were gentle as they traced the curve of her cheek before tucking her hair behind her ear. "You're going to feel bad for doing that later." He understood it, and he would call Nicole and smooth things over, but it was Sharon that he was worried about.

"Yes," she agreed, "you are probably correct." Sharon shrugged. "She needed to hear it, and she will answer the next time you try to reach her. I won't regret that." She laid her hand against his chest. He had packed the gray, fleece pullover that she liked, and put it on before coming outside. "I'm sorry. I'm just not feeling very much like sparing Nicole's feelings at the moment. I'll apologize when everything is… more settled."

"You have nothing to be sorry for." Andy pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her. He turned his face into her hair and inhaled deeply. "My relationship with my kids is complicated. It always has been. You're part of that now, and I appreciate that you're in my corner. Right now, though, you are what's important. You and the kids, Ricky and Emily. That's what I'm worried about. That's all that matters."

Her arms wrapped around his middle. Sharon fisted her hands in his sweater. She turned her face into his neck. He had shaved. The familiar scent of his aftershave was oddly comforting. "I love you," she said. "Whatever happens, whatever I say or do, please know that. I have been so good at taking care of myself for so long that I forgot what it feels like to have someone else in my life that was willing to care for me too." Sharon leaned back for a moment. She looked up at him, eyes moist again. "You do take very good care of me, and I always appreciate it, even if I don't say it enough."

"I know that." He cupped her face in his hands. "Sharon, I _know_." She just didn't like the hovering anymore than he did. She was a little more diplomatic about it, however, at least most of the time. He tipped her head back and pressed a light, gentle kiss to her lips. "If you wanna get mad, if you wanna yell and scream, and beat on something, or someone, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

Sharon gripped his chin in her hand and kissed him again before wrapping her arms around him once more. She hugged him tightly. "I'm going to remind you that you said that. It's going to get harder, Andy. It's going to get worse before it ever gets better. Everything hurts. It's almost like an emotional overload; I can't identify any one feeling from one moment to the next. I miss him, and I want him back, I know that much. I am so angry, and I can't stop thinking that it would be different if we had been here. Part of me wants to blame you for even suggesting that we go to Ireland, but I know, logically, I know how ridiculous that is. I just don't know how logical or rational I'm going to be feeling later. But mostly," emotion filled her voice, "mostly I just want to hold him one more time."

Andy cupped the back of her head. "I wish I could make it better. I wish that I could go back and change it all. I would give anything to give you all of that."

"Just hold me," she whispered. "Don't let go, Andy. Please."

"Never," he promised. "No matter what happens." He couldn't take away her pain, but he would always be there to try and make it better, in whatever way he could.

 **-TBC-**


	5. Chapter 5

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** You all are really awesome! I can't say that enough.

* * *

 **Chapter 5**

"Momma."

Emily was in her mother's arms within seconds of stepping inside the house. She left Ricky to deal with their bags and threw herself into her mother's embrace. "Oh god, I don't believe it."

"Shh…" Sharon cupped the back of her daughter's head and settled her against her shoulder. "I know, baby." She closed her eyes and concentrated on just holding her girl for a moment. "It's okay," she crooned, despite that being the farthest from the truth.

Ricky exchanged a look with Andy as he maneuvered his and Emily's bags into the living room, along with his laptop bag. "Hey, Andy." He felt a bit of relief at finally being there, and finally getting the chance to check on the rest of his family.

"Hey kid." Andy took one of the bags from him and set it against the far wall, near the entrance to the den, where the kids would be sleeping. He gestured for Ricky to do the same before both men straightened. He clasped the younger man's shoulder and gave him a critical look. "Okay?"

He shrugged and pushed his hands into his pockets. "Yeah, whatever that means." Ricky let his gaze fall on his mother and sister. "How is she doing?" He was more than a little worried about her, and what this was going to do to her recovery.

Before Andy could respond, Sharon's eyes opened. She returned her son's gaze and pivoted slightly so that she could hold out an arm and beckon him closer. " _She_ does not need the two of you speaking about her as if she isn't here. Get over here."

Ricky shot a bemused look at his stepdad before he walked over to slide into the hug. He wrapped his arms around both his mother and his sister. It was easy for him to engulf them in his embrace, since he towered over the two of them. "I'm really sorry, mom," he said quietly. This was hard for all of them, but he couldn't really imagine what she was feeling. If he was honest about it, Ricky didn't entirely know what he was feeling either. He seemed to run the gamut from feeling completely wrecked, utterly shocked, and infuriated. He had busted an old end table in his apartment last night. Ricky had that thing since he was in college. It had survived frat parties, roommates, and a few escapades that his mother would _never_ hear about. Last night, in a fit of rage, he picked it up and threw it across the room. It was now a pile of kindling.

He couldn't help himself, though. Had his mother not been through enough? After all the crap years with his dad she was finally happy. She finally had anything and everything that she could possibly want. Her career was where she wanted it to be. Her kids were grown, happy, and successful. She was in love. Not that the last thing was necessarily important to a happy life, but she had love and she was loved in return. Ricky was absolutely certain of that. He saw the way his stepfather looked at his mother. It was as if she was the very center of the universe, the moon and the stars, and the rising sun. After growing up with his parents as an example of what adult relationships could be like, he always made sure that his own relationships were casual. It was easier that way. No one could get hurt or disappointed.

Ricky began to amend those thoughts in the last six months, and especially since the wedding. Although, he supposed if he went back further, he really started to amend how he looked at life when his mother adopted Rusty. He began to see life as more fluid. The closest distance between two points might have been a straight line, but he was learning that the twisting and turning, winding paths in life could be the most interesting, and the most rewarding.

He was resistant to the idea of Rusty. He didn't want his mother to get hurt, and wasn't that what happened when you let new people into your life? They inevitably hurt you. He didn't want that to happen to her, she had been hurt enough. Underneath it all, however, if Ricky was brutally honest with himself, he was afraid that _he_ might get hurt.

It was hard to stay distant, not when his mother was so hopeful and so happy. When he finally decided to get to know the other boy, he saw a kid that was damaged, guarded, and completely unsure of his place in the world. He didn't trust easily, but there was something else about him that stood out to Ricky. It was the way he looked at his mother. It was a little like the way Andy looked at her, in so much as he was totally devoted. She was the world to him, and he would do anything for her.

In the end, he got hurt anyway. Ricky never wanted a little brother, but his mother had given him one. He got to know Rusty and he found an ally and a friend. It was different than his relationship with his sister. He and Emily had grown up together. There was not a day when Emily had not been there. They had shared hurts and secrets, dreams and fears. They fought and they laughed, and they knew that no matter what happened, they would always have each other.

It was his job, as the older brother, to teach Rusty those things. To show him that they could laugh and fight, they could joke and conspire, and in each other they would always have that one person that would be there, whenever and wherever they were needed.

Sharon felt the tremor that worked its way through Ricky's body. She leaned back and looked up at her son. Her head tilted at him, and she hummed quietly as she cupped his chin. He wouldn't meet her gaze. His head was bowed, but she saw the tremble in his lips. She tipped his face up and watched as his gaze slowly lifted. His eyes were wet. Tears were beginning to pool in their coffee brown depths. His jaw clenched and his lips twisted stubbornly, and for a moment, he resembled the boy that he had once been. The unruly five year old that thought he was too big to cry at a scolding, but sad to know that he had disappointed her. "Oh Ricky…"

She cupped his face in her hands and drew him down until their foreheads rested together. He always thought he had to be strong for everyone. He kept everything bottled inside, or tried to. He got that from her. With the pads of her thumbs she gently swept away the tears that rolled down his cheeks. "Let it go," she whispered.

He bent until his forehead was resting against her shoulder. Ricky drew a single, shuddering breath, and lifted a hand to cover his eyes. It wasn't that he was embarrassed to cry, but he told himself he wouldn't. He spent the night talking with Emily, listening to her cry and worry, and question what any of their lives were for if this was the end result. He had paced, and he had gotten angry, but he hadn't cried. Not yet. His eyes teared up upon hearing the news, and a few times throughout the night and this morning he had swallowed back a tight knot of grief.

Ricky lifted his head and gave his mother a wet, miserable look. "I came down the other week, after you left for Ireland. We short-sheeted your bed and replaced all of Andy's suspenders with naughty cartoon ones from a novelty store in Hollywood." He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes to clear them. "We poured out his aftershave and replaced it with _Brittany Spears_ perfume, and put six boxes of _Just For Men_ hair dye on his shelf in the bathroom. It was a stupid post honeymoon prank, you know, officially welcoming the new stepdad to the family. When we talked about the look on Andy's face when he realized he smelled like a teenager, Rusty laughed so hard that he fell off the sofa and ended up flailing like a little turtle on the floor. That was the last time I saw him. We talked the other night." He frowned. His lips trembled again. "We talked almost every night," he whispered, and tried to wipe away another onslaught of tears.

"He was going to come to New York." Emily had retreated a step while her mother comforted her brother. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself, while tears moved unchecked down her face. "He had some time before his law school classes started. We talked about it, and he was going to come and stay with me, get away from here for a while, have the full tourist experience." She lifted a trembling hand to her mouth and pressed her fingers against her lips. Her voice trembled with grief. "He only visited that once, when the two of you came for the weekend a couple of years ago. We always talked about him going back, staying longer, but he was always busy with school, or his vlog, or the internship at the DA's office."

"We talked about that." Andrea had come by that morning to check on Sharon, and to extend her own condolences. There was a big part of her that still couldn't believe it was real. She had called Lieutenant Provenza that morning in a sudden fit of panic and hope, and threatened him to within an inch of his life if this was some kind of ploy to bring Stroh out of hiding. Of course it wasn't, and with those hopes dashed, she had to grieve anew.

When the kids arrived, she and Patrice had gone in to the kitchen to bring out the tea and coffee, and give the two of them a few moments with their mother. Andrea carried one of the trays out while Patrice managed with the other. They set both of them on the low coffee table. Andrea smoothed her hands down her slacks as she straightened. "I told Rusty to take the next few weeks off. He graduated from college, and he was starting law school. I told him that I would hold his job, and when his classes started, we would talk about adjusting his hours and schedule." She looked at Sharon and offered a small, sad smile. "Besides, everyone knows the law library at the District Attorney's office is better than UCLA's. He was going to have access to the best legal minds and materials in the city. He could afford to take a vacation."

She was going to begin crying again if she focused on the fact that her son was now referred to in the past tense by everyone who had known him, so Sharon turned away instead. She wrapped a hand around Ricky's arm and curled an arm around Emily's shoulders. She guided the two of them to the sofa with her and beckoned them to sit down. Sharon kept an arm around Emily, but wrapped her fingers around Ricky's hand and held it. She drew a breath and exhaled slowly, quietly, before she began speaking. "There is nothing that I can say that is ever going to make sense of this for any of us." Her voice was low and quiet as she put the thoughts she spent the morning organizing in to words. Sharon had forgone the sedative today. She didn't want to feel muddled or heavy, or _blissed out,_ as Andy would say, when her children arrived. She wanted to be able to think clearly and react to them, react to their grief in the way that they needed her to. Even while she felt like she was slowly dying inside. "When I brought Rusty into this family," she continued, "I hoped that you would come to care for him as I did. I never imaged that you would become as close as you did." Sharon stopped speaking. She pressed her lips together and attempted to blink away the tears that were filling her eyes. She cleared her throat and looked from her daughter to her son. "That has been a blessing to me, and I know it was to Rusty too."

Andrea watched Ricky and Emily embrace their mother again. She turned away when her own eyes filled. She was having a difficult time controlling her own tears. "I'm going to get going," she told Andy. She hadn't intended to stay this long, but it was hard to leave when one of the strongest women she knew seemed so broken. "Let me know what she decides to do about that other thing." She glanced over at Sharon and the kids again. "And keep an eye on her too, okay?"

"As much as she'll let me." He returned Hobbs' look. They both knew how stubborn Sharon could be. He would only be able to take care of her as much as she would allow. It was important for her to feel like she had some control. To be honest, all he could do was be there to support her, catch her if she fell, and wait in case she needed him. "I'll walk you out." Andy needed to get some fresh air anyway. He knew the kids' arrival would be tough, and he thought maybe Sharon could use a minute or two alone with them.

"I'll go with you," Patrice offered. She wanted to make sure that Andrea was honestly feeling steadier before she left. The DDA was, like the rest of them, feeling guilty that more couldn't be done to protect Rusty from this end.

When they were alone again, Ricky turned to his mother. "What other thing?" He asked curiously. "Did something else happen? Have they learned anything?"

"No." She gave his hand a squeeze. Sharon shook her head. "We realized this morning that there was another notification that we need to make." She felt a little disappointed in herself that it had not occurred to her before Provenza had called and asked what they planned to do. He was prepared to send one of the team to do it, or do it himself so that she wouldn't have to. "Rusty's birth mother is still unaware of the situation," she said carefully. "We were going to drive up and see her in person…"

"What?" Ricky sat up straighter. "Mom, no." His brows drew together in a deep frown. "That's a little much, don't you think? You've been through a lot lately. You don't owe Sharon Beck anything."

"Ricky." Sharon shook her head at him. She reached up to cup his cheek. He could be so stubborn when his protective instincts were triggered. "Her son was my son, and now he's dead. If our positions were reversed, I would hope that someone had the compassion to tell me in person that we had lost him. She's honestly been doing very well, and even if she weren't, she would warrant as gentle a notification as we could arrange. It's the right thing to do," she added gently.

"If it's the right thing to do," Emily asked, taking a far more gentle approach than Ricky had chosen, "then why is everyone trying to talk you out of it? Mom, what about your health? You're under a lot of stress right now; I thought your doctor told you to avoid that. Telling her yourself is just going to make it worse." She sighed when her mother frowned at her. She could see the disappointment in her eyes. "We're just worried about you."

"I understand that," Sharon said, "but it is not for you to take care of me. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Look," She exhaled a long, calming breath, "I do appreciate it, I really do, but I am neither incapable nor an invalid. I love you both, so very much," her voice dipped, growing thick with emotion, "but she deserves to hear this, mother to mother." Sharon sighed. "The problem here is not my ability withstand this visit, but hers. Sharon has been living with her former…partner's parents," she said, for lack of a better term. "I think Rusty told you about that?"

"Yeah." Ricky leaned forward. He was angled toward her, but rested his arms across his knees. "She had a baby. Its other grandparents took her in so they could help her raise it."

"Her," his mother corrected, "Sharon Beck gave birth to a little girl earlier this year. As we understand it things were going very well." Her lips turned down. "When Andy and I called the Lewises this morning, to make sure that she would be home this afternoon before we made the drive, they told use that she's back in rehab."

"Of course she is." Ricky stood up. He ran a hand through his hair before he started to pace. "I was afraid this was going to happen. Did Rusty know? He never said."

"I don't believe so." Sharon shrugged. "He never mentioned it to me. Your brother and I didn't keep things from each other, especially when they involved his birthmother." That wasn't entirely true, of course, but she had once promised Rusty that she would only withhold information for as long as it took her to put all of the facts together. "According to the Lewises, Sharon had a difficult time after Aubrey was born. She didn't start drinking or using drugs again, but she was incredibly depressed. The rehab facility is up the coast, near Santa Barbara. It was recommended by someone in their church. Sharon was worried that she would begin using again if she didn't get everything under control, so she checked herself in. She's going to do a thirty-day inpatient program, and follow-up with an outpatient program closer to home. It was actually a very good decision on her part."

"So… what?" Emily looked confused. "Her in-laws don't think you should tell her about Rusty because she's in rehab? How is that helping her? Won't it be worse for her when she gets out and finds out what happened?" She glanced at her brother, who looked just as unconvinced as she did.

"That is actually why I am _not_ making the drive," their mother explained. "The Lewises asked us to wait. They called the facility and spoke to Sharon's counselor. He believes it would be better if she receives the news from someone that she is closer to. The Lewises are going to tell her, and her counselors at the facility will keep a closer eye on her." Sharon sighed. "We were specifically asked _not_ to go and see her. I'm not convinced this is the correct way to handle it, but I'm not the expert on addiction."

"You're not far off," Ricky muttered. He folded his arms across his chest and frowned at her again. "What does Andy say? Does he agree with that? I'd trust his advice before I trusted anyone else."

Warmth filled her. Sharon wished she had it in her to smile, because she would have beamed at him in that moment if she could. Her children had truly accepted him, and she would be forever grateful for that. If only their family wasn't now incomplete, they could celebrate their success in bringing it together. "He thinks that we should listen to her counselors," she admitted quietly. "Andy says that they're in a better position than we are to know how much she can handle. He also reminded me that my relationship with Sharon is… rocky, at best. It may actually do more harm than good if I am the one that tells her. So I'm not going."

Ricky sighed as he sat down again. "I'm sorry mom. You can't do everything. I know that you like to, and you're pretty awesome at it, but it's okay if you don't this time. It's okay if you let people take care of you. Just this once, just for a little while," he said, a slightly pleading note in his tone.

"We can't lose you too," Emily said in a small voice. "You should let the people who can take care of Rusty's birthmother do that, while we take care of you." Through her tears she managed a weak smile. "You both deserve to be taken care of, mom. You said that her son was your son. You both lost him." Emily reached over and clasped one of her mother's hands in both of hers, "What you both need is to have the people closest to you making sure that you're okay."

"I just feel terrible about it, Em." Sharon looked away. Her face fell into a miserable expression. "I just keep thinking about Rusty. As terrible as his mother was to him when he was younger, and as hard as it was for him to move past it, he did love her. I feel like he would want us looking after her."

"She might have been his birthmother," Ricky said gently, "but you were his mom. I'm pretty sure he would agree with us."

"Maybe." Sharon shrugged at them. She wasn't prepared to agree. She decided this was one of those situations where they would all just have to agree to disagree.

"What about Gus?" Emily asked, deciding to change the topic to something that she thought might be a little simpler.

Sharon's brow arched. She gave her daughter a long, considering look. "What about him?" She finally asked, bristling just a bit.

"Has he been told?" Emily glanced from her mother to Ricky. Behind her, unseen, he was shaking his head and scowling at his sister. "What?" She was genuinely confused at their reaction.

"I have not personally spoken to him, no." Sharon folded her legs and clasped her hands together against her lap. Gustavo Wallace might have been the very last person that she wanted to speak to at this moment in time, especially when she remembered the heartbreak that he had put her son through recently.

"Mom." Emily frowned at her. "Don't you think that someone should tell him?" She was finding it a little hard to believe that the young man was being left out of their notifications. Rusty had dated him for a while, and they were especially close before that.

"Why?" It was Ricky that voiced the question. "Gus is his ex-boyfriend," he reminded her. "Why should mom have to sit down and ultimately end up comforting the guy that cheated on Rusty?"

Emily's gaze moved between the two of them again. "I don't know," she said at length, "maybe because it's the right thing to do?"

"Emily." Sharon sighed. She stood up and paced around the room. Her arms were folded across her chest. "Gus chose to end that relationship, and in a rather disgusting manner. How or when he finds out is not up to me."

"Mom." Emily's eyes widened in astonishment, she had never heard her mother discuss anyone with so much detachment before, not even their father. Emily sat straighter on the sofa and followed her mother's movements with her eyes. "I thought the whole issue with his cheating was because of his boss? He cheated _with_ his boss, and then when he wasn't comfortable with the situation anymore, he was fired?" When her mother didn't respond beyond a low hum and Ricky's expression remained stubborn, she groaned. "Did anyone ever stop to consider the fact that this sounds like classic sexual harassment? This Aiden guy pursued him, probably even pressured him, and went so far as to use a promotion as a way to isolate him from all the people that he knows well, like his friends and his boyfriend. If he was a woman, would you feel like this?"

"No," Sharon stopped pacing and rubbed her forehead. "You're right, that was exactly what happened." That didn't change her feelings on the matter of his cheating, though. Sharon drew a breath and let it out slowly. "I will speak with him."

"Mom!" Ricky shook his head at her. She was taking on too much. This wasn't good for her.

"Ricky, she's right. I know better. I will speak to Gus, it _is_ the right thing to do."

"No," he decided. "I'll do it. There's still no reason for you to have to be the one." When his sister frowned at him, he rolled his eyes at her. "I can be nice." His mother's snort had his eyes widening. "What? I can!"

Emily exchanged a look with her mother before she leaned across the sofa to squeeze his arm. "Of course you can."

Ricky sighed at them. When Andy came back inside, joined by Patrice, he gestured at his mother and sister. "Will you tell them that I can be nice?"

Andy looked at his wife, then his stepdaughter. He didn't know what they had been discussing and wasn't all that certain that he _wanted_ to know. His lips pursed for a moment. Finally, he shook his head at Ricky. "Yeah, but how many _Hail Mary_ 's are you going to have to say when you're done?" Andy walked over and stood behind Sharon. He laid his hands on her shoulders and kissed the side of her head. "Okay?"

"Hm." She reached up and covered one of his hands with hers. "We were talking about who should tell Gus. Ricky has volunteered. Emily isn't convinced that he would be the right choice."

"Ah." Andy gave her shoulders a squeeze. "None of you have to worry about it," he said. "It's already taken care of. Amy is going to make the notification. It might already be done." His hands stroked down Sharon's arms to loosely clasp her wrists before folding his arms around her. "I thought about it last night, before I finally came to bed," he told his wife. "Provenza said he'd take care of it." Then Andy had forgotten. The morning had been filled with other thoughts and worries, and a lot of emotions that they were all trying to process.

"There you go," Sharon told her children, "problem solved. Why don't the two of you go and freshen up, and take your bags into the den. We'll figure out what we would like to do for lunch, and then there are a lot of things that we need to discuss."

"There is a full guest bath just down the hall," Patrice pointed, "first room on the left. There is also a half bath just off the kitchen, beside the utility room." She smiled at the pair. "Let me know if you need anything."

The siblings exchanged a look, but it was Ricky who spoke. "We will. Thank you, for doing all of this." He glanced at his mother. "We really appreciate it."

"Of course. This is what families do. My husband and your stepfather are practically brothers. It doesn't seem like it now," she said gently, "but you will get through this."

Andy watched them disburse and looked down at his wife. He turned her in his arms and took a moment to gauge how she was doing. "You're exhausted," he said quietly. He knew he couldn't coddle her, and he couldn't smother. "What can I do?"

"Rewind the world a few days?" Sharon shook her head at him. She leaned forward and rested against his shoulder with a sigh. "You're already doing it. Everything that feels so empty and dark, but you're warm, and you're here." Her arms wrapped around his middle. Sharon stood there and concentrated on that feeling. It was a sense of calm in the middle of this terrible storm. "Do you think that she's right? Do we get through this? What does the other side even look like?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I haven't thought that far ahead. It might not be great, but it's gotta be better than this."

No platitudes, no empty promises. Sharon hummed quietly. His brutal honesty was one of the things that she loved about him. "I'm going to call Father Stan and arrange that meeting." He wanted to come by again when her children arrived. "I guess I really can't continue to delay the inevitable."

"No." Andy kissed the top of her head. "We can't." His hands stroked her back before settling against her shoulders again. "I'll make a couple of calls myself. Find out where we're at with it." They had a funeral to plan. It wasn't going to be easy, but it needed to be done. Andy would speak with Morales to see how close they were to having Rusty released to them, and then they would sit down with the priest and they would find a mortuary. It was going to get better. He didn't know how, but he had to believe that if they could get through this hell, the other side of it would be better… whatever that meant.

 **-TBC-**


	6. Chapter 6

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** Sorry for the delay! RL is kicking our butts! This one didn't go through **Sassy Beta** , who is hella busy at the moment. I wanted to get this out before the weekend. Thanks everyone, you rock!

* * *

 **Chapter 6**

"You don't have to do this." Andy gave Sharon's hand a squeeze. "We can leave. I can sign the papers, and we can just go. This can wait, Sharon."

They spent most of the day with her children and Father Stan. The priest had suggested a mortuary, and apparently knew the director well. Ben Stevens from Rolling Hills Memorial Mortuary was even willing to come to the house for that first consultation. As difficult as it was, they had gone through all of the options available to them.

Anyone who didn't think the situation could get any worse had never sat and watched a mother pick out a casket for her youngest son. They hadn't held her hand, or felt the bite of her nails against their palm as she listened to the difference between mahogany and aluminum, or a beautiful polished oak. She had finally chosen a dark, polished walnut with a cream-colored crepe interior and classic gold accents.

The entire process had exhausted her, but she had soldiered through it. They would finalize all of the rest of the details once the mortuary was able to take possession of the body. For the moment, the preliminary arrangements were taken care of, and Stevens had worked with their priest enough to know what the process would be for a funeral at St. Joseph's. It took some of the burden off Sharon's shoulders, for which Andy was grateful, but the hardest part was still coming.

They had arrived at it.

Morales called. He was ready to release the body. He needed someone to give him the name of the mortuary that would be picking Rusty up, and to sign the forms authorizing it all. Andy would have taken care of it, but legally, he wasn't next of kin. According to _the rules_ , because Rusty had died without a will, it was an interstate death. Since he had no spouse or children, his next of kin was his mother. Her spouse would have only qualified, in the legal sense, if he was also part of the adoption. Morales had suggested they bypass that little part of the rules. He could pretend not to know otherwise, and would be perfectly satisfied with the Lieutenant signing those forms.

Andy might have gone along with it, if not for the fact that he knew they had to work this case completely by the book. From beginning to end, there was nothing that any of them could do that would create a technicality for Stroh once he was caught. Although small, the chances that Stroh's attorneys could use the fact that the body of his last victim was released to someone other than the legal next of kin kept Andy from taking the chance. He hated himself for it. He loathed the very thoughts that crossed his mind and the rulebook that they came out of.

Now he was standing with Sharon, and the familiar tiled walls of the morgue corridor were surrounding them. Signing the papers wasn't enough for her. Sharon was insisting on seeing Rusty. She had to see him. It wouldn't feel real, she told him, until she could see him with her own eyes. Andy wasn't entirely sure that the morgue was the right place for that, but he understood it. These weren't the sad, deceptively calming walls of a mortuary. It was a building that Sharon was familiar with. She was on her own turf, so to speak. She felt more in control in a place where she was used to keeping her emotions in check. Andy didn't totally agree, and he was ready to take her out of there, take her anywhere else, but he got it. In the worst possible way, he understood exactly what she was doing.

She was owning her grief. Sharon was grasping the very threads of who she was and clinging to them. It was all that she could really do at the moment.

Her gaze slowly lifted. Sharon returned his look, and her hand squeezed his in response. "No," she told him, speaking slowly and a bit haltingly, "this we have to do. _I_ have to do this. I couldn't protect him, and I can't hide from the result." She could sign the papers without seeing him. Morales could fax them to her, and she could courier them back. There was no reason that she had to be there, except that Sharon felt like she needed to be. She exhaled quietly, slowly, and then nodded to her husband. "I'm…" She wasn't ready. She would never be _ready_ for this. "You can knock," she told him instead.

Morales met them when they arrived. The administrative part was done. It had taken all of two seconds, perhaps less, for her to sign her name to the necessary forms. Then he had given them a moment, and told them to knock on the door when they were ready. Andy did that now. His knuckles rapped lightly on the steel door. He kept Sharon's hand wrapped in his other; he wasn't letting go of her, not until he absolutely had to. "Let's do this," he rumbled at the medical examiner.

The door was pushed open for them. Morales stood to the side as they entered. The room was even more spotless than it normally was. He made sure of that. Fernando had done his very best work on arranging this viewing. It was never easy, and it was never painless. He just didn't want it to be anymore traumatic than it had to be. "I'll be outside," he said quietly. "You both know what to do."

"Yeah," Andy sighed. They knew a little _too_ well. He looked at his wife. Her eyes were focused on the floor in front of them. She hadn't looked up yet. He squeezed her hand again. "Come on, babe." He couldn't protect her from it, but he could get her through it.

Sharon rubbed her lips together. The sterile, medicinal smell around them made her stomach churn. Her eyes closed for just a moment. She steeled herself as much as she could before she lifted her gaze. No amount of preparation or experience could have helped. It didn't stop all the air from rushing out of her lungs, or her fingers from curling so that her nails bit into Andy's hand. A small sound escaped her throat. Sharon shook her head when Andy opened his mouth. No, she wasn't okay. No, she didn't want to leave.

She wriggled her fingers against his palm until he let go of her hand. Exhaling again, she forced her legs to move. Her feet felt heavy as they carried her toward the steel table in the center of the room. Her son was lying on that table. If not for the gray pallor and the utter stillness of his form, he might have been sleeping. He always looked so peaceful when he slept.

The doctor had arranged him so that the sheet was drawn up to his shoulders. He made sure that she couldn't see what she knew was there, the stitched Y-incision and the knife wound that had ended his life. She gripped the edge of the table when she reached it. It was cool. It was always cool to the touch, and although she knew logically that he didn't feel anything anymore, it didn't stop the small thought from flittering across her mind that Rusty would be so uncomfortable lying there, in only a sheet, on that freezing metal.

Her lips felt unbelievably dry as they parted. She kept her breaths slow and measured, even when moisture filled her eyes and blurred her vision. Her fingers trembled when she finally lifted her left hand. His hair had been combed. That was Morales too, she knew. The bodies they dealt with on a regular basis didn't always look this good when she saw them, but he had tried. She was grateful for that. Sharon smoothed a lock of hair away from his brow.

"I'm sorry." The words were barely audible. The backs of her fingers stroked his cheek. "I am so very sorry," she whispered again. "If I had known…" a single tear spilled down her cheek. Sharon stopped talking for a moment and pressed her lips into a thin line. Her jaw clenched for a moment. The ache rising in her chest was threatening to take her very ability to breathe. "Oh god." She looked up, toward the bright, overhead light, and blinked furiously. She hummed, the sound low and pained. She gave up trying to fight the tears, it simply couldn't be done. She let them fall and looked at him again. "If I had known this could happen," she managed, and forced the words from a throat that was trying to close, "I'd have sent you away. I kept you here because I couldn't stand the idea of saying goodbye. Now here we are. I am so sorry that I didn't protect you better."

When she leaned heavily against the table, when her shoulders hunched and her body shook, Andy was there. There were tears in his eyes at watching her pain. He wrapped an arm around her middle and drew her against his chest. "He stayed because he loved you," Andy said gently.

"Where did that get him?" Sharon turned herself in his embrace and let her head rest against his shoulder. She fisted her hands in his sweater and held on tightly. "What good was I for him?"

"He got farther with you than he ever would've alone." Andy turned his face into her hair. "He needed you, and he had you, and you didn't do this. The kid loved you, completely."

It just wasn't fair. She had always done everything right. She taught her kids to do everything right. How was it that the monster still got to win? She turned her face into his chest and squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Sharon took a deep breath, but it got caught in her throat. "Oh god, I can't do this. I can't…" Her mouth opened and the pain that she had been trying to hold back for days, the pain that had been building in her chest since they arrived, was finally given voice.

It was the desperate, pained howl of a grieving mother. Morales had heard it before. Even muffled as it was, behind a door and thick walls , didn't stop the chill that went through him at the sound. He was leaning against the wall, waiting. He knew it would come, and when it did, his head tipped back and his eyes closed. People wondered how it was that he did his job. This was how. The dead had people who loved them; people who continued to feel pain after they were gone. He couldn't stop that pain. He couldn't bring back life. What he could do was be a voice for the dead, and he could help make sure that the people who were responsible for ending their lives went away for a long, long time.

When they emerged from the room, the doctor was waiting for them, but he was not alone. Sharon drew up short at the sight in front of her. Her lips parted and her eyes widened. Waiting in the corridor was the entirety of her team. They all straightened when she appeared. Sharon shook her head at them. "What are you all doing here?"

"The doctor called us." Provenza stepped forward, away from the wall that he had been leaning against. Truth be told, Patrice had given him the head's up. He had Morales call him when they went in. He and the others headed over at that point. They wanted to be here for her, but they didn't want her to feel like they were crowding her. She didn't need to feel like she had to be strong for them.

"He said the mortuary was coming to pick up Rusty, ma'am." Julio shrugged at her. "We wanted to be here. We're going to go with him, make sure that he gets there okay." He remembered how the team had been there for him when Oscar died. That was before the Commander's time with them. They had been there for him, again, when his mother passed several weeks ago. The Commander had come to him at the hospital. She prayed with him in the chapel. She was the one to call Father Stan for him, and she sat with Mark for him until he could get someone else there to take the boy. She did it because she was his boss, and his friend, so this was the least that he could do for her.

"We all wanted to be here," Amy said. She glanced at the others. They had been worried about her, but none of them would voice it. They trusted Lieutenant Provenza when he told them that she was in good hands with the rest of her family. She was pale and drawn, but Amy supposed that was to be expected. She had never seen the Commander looking so defeated, and it made her heart ache. It also left her burning with a renewed purpose to do something about it, to find the person responsible.

Sharon looked from one face to the next. She pressed her fingers to her lips. As bitterly cold as the morgue felt, warmth filled her. She gave them a tremulous, watery smile. "Thank you. Truly. But you should all be working." It would feel wrong if she didn't remind them of that fact.

It was Mike that gave her the small, knowing smile. "We are." Rusty had been their responsibility too.

Andy stood against her back. His hands rested against her shoulders. "They've got him," he whispered against her hair.

She nodded quietly. Sharon looked down for a moment. She wasn't even sure how long they had been in with him. It felt like forever and not long enough at the same time. She drew a slow, shaky breath. "Yes," she agreed. Her eyes closed, just for a moment, and she said a silent prayer, for all of them. "We should go," she said afterward. She didn't want to be there when the mortuary van arrived.

"Yeah." Andy gave her shoulders a squeeze before his hands dropped. He looked over her head at his partner and nodded. Andy took a step back. This was for her, as much as it was for the team. They had been together a long time, all of them. There were times when it was hard to believe that she hadn't always been with them. That didn't matter now. They were hers, but she was theirs .

Provenza took another step forward when the Commander walked toward them on her way to the exit. Flynn was going to hang back, follow a few paces behind. The Lieutenant took her hand. She was staying in his house, but he hadn't really seen her since the afternoon they found Rusty in the condo. "Commander," his voice lilted quietly, the timbre rumbling. "Whatever you need. What _ever_ you need," he said again, stressing each word.

Mike was next. While he didn't take her hand, he did step forward. He offered a carefully sympathetic smile. "Kathy and the boys send their condolences," he said. "Let us know if you need anything." His brows lifted. " _Anything_ ," he repeated, making sure that point was clear.

Sharon touched his shoulder. A single tear made its way down her cheek, and she let it. "Thank you, Mike. Kevin might have been the first person close to his own age that Rusty ever considered a friend. We were always grateful for that." The Lieutenant's son had moved away to college not long after Rusty had come to live with her, but having another teenager around had made things less awkward for Rusty when he was getting to know them all. It had been incredibly helpful.

"Ma'am." Julio reached inside his jacket and pulled out a slightly crumpled, handmade card. "Mark sent you this." He shrugged as she opened it. He noticed her hands were trembling, but he pretended that he didn't. "We're really sorry," he whispered.

"Tell Mark that I will see him in a few days." Sharon held the card to her chest. She would thank the boy for it when she saw them at mass. She leaned in and hugged Julio. "Thank you," she whispered.

So it went, one by one each of her team stepped forward, telling her what was in their heart. She received a hug from Amy and shared silence, tears with Buzz. That moment might have been the hardest. He had looked at her, and then away. It was Sharon that spoke first. She cupped his chin and drew his gaze back to her. "When he got the acceptance letter for law school," she told him, voice hitching with the emotion that was clogging her throat, "he told me, but then he called you. He knew that he never would have passed Algebra, or English, if it hadn't been for you, least of all getting in to college." Sharon stopped speaking and took a moment to sort out her next words. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "When I adopted Rusty, he got stuck with Ricky, but you were the brother that he chose."

His lips were pursed, and his eyes wet. Buzz nodded his head. "Mine too," he told her. He took her hand, just for a moment, and then stepped back so that the next person would have their turn.

There would be time for condolences in the days to come, and surely at the memorial. This was for them, however, this was family. When they'd finished, Andy joined Sharon at the exit. He laid a hand on her back as they walked through the doors and made their way down the hall to the elevator. His fingers stroked a soothing path up and down the space between her shoulder blades.

"When I picked you up for our first date," he rumbled quietly, "the first real one," he added for clarification, "Rusty let me in while you finished getting ready. I was a little early, a couple of minutes, and I realized that mistake almost immediately. It gave him time to interrogate me. I guess I should've figured out then that he was going to end up a lawyer." Andy's hand moved up to cup the back of her neck. His thumb stroked the soft expanse of skin. "He wanted to know where we were going, when I was going to have you home, why going out was such a big deal all of a sudden, and to remind me that if I had any intention of doing anything _gross_ , the condo wasn't that big, so please _god_ keep it down." Andy slanted a look at her. "So imagine my surprise when, a few months later, I woke up in the hospital with the kid scowling at me. He gave me hell, not because I scared you, but because I scared him. We spent a lot of time together during those weeks, talked about a lot of things. He was a good kid, Sharon, but you raised a good man."

She nodded slowly. "I had a lot of help," she said tearfully. He had strong people in his life, people who had cared. Rusty could be difficult, god only knew, but they stuck it out and he had come to appreciate them for it, just as she did. It was horrible that her son would never get the chance to say that, but she was beginning to realize they knew. She reached up and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Andy, I don't want to go back to the house just yet. Can we go anywhere else? Just… drive somewhere."

He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Babe, we can go anywhere you want." His thumb stroked the curve of her damp cheek. "You just say where and I'm there." He knew that she was feeling especially raw at the moment, and if they went back to the house the kids would have questions for her. She wasn't ready for that yet.

Sharon thought about it for a moment. "Silver Lake?" She tilted her head at him. "It isn't far from the house. The park shouldn't be that crowded. We can walk around the lake." Normally they would go to the beach, but Sharon wasn't in the mood to deal with many people. She wanted the quiet, and the solitude, or as much as they could find. The lake should be peaceful enough, and the air would be fresh.

"Okay," he nodded. "We can do that." His hand slid down her arm to take her hand. They stepped into the elevator when the doors opened. "I'll send Ricky a text and let him know we're making another stop."

"Good." Sharon leaned her head against his shoulder. She felt completely exhausted. Twice that day Andy had asked her if she was sure she didn't want to take the sedative. She was glad that she had given it a pass. Sharon couldn't imagine feeling any heavier than she already felt. "Maybe after the lake, we can stop by the condo." If Rusty's body had been released, she knew that the crime scene was too.

"Sharon." Andy sighed. He looked down at her. "I'm not sure that's a good idea." He wanted to get someone in to clean the place up first. Right now it would be exactly as SID and their team had left it. He didn't really want her or the kids to have to see that.

She felt him go stiff when she said it. Sharon lifted her head and returned his frown. "I am not a delicate flower. Nor am I a precious cupcake , Andrew Flynn. My son is dead and my heart is broken. No amount of ignoring the place where it happened is going to change any of that. Besides which," she tugged her hand out of his and wrapped her arm around his before leaning more fully in to his side, "we need clothes. You only packed enough for a couple of days. We should pick up a few items, and I want to get Rusty's favorite suit. The mortuary is going to need it." She thought about getting him a new one, but there was one that he really liked, the first suit that he had picked out entirely on his own without her or Andy tagging along.

Andy sighed. His shoulders deflated a bit. "Sharon, I don't think you're a delicate anything. You forget how long I've known you." She had certainly put him on his ass a few times, and he wasn't talking about in the gym. The woman had a razor tongue and a sharper wit, and she wasn't afraid to use either when she needed to. "There are just some things you shouldn't have to see, that's all."

"I know." She laid her cheek against his shoulder again. "Not seeing them isn't going to help. My imagination can do far worse than what is actually waiting for us at home." She pressed a kiss to his leather clad shoulder and straightened when the elevator stopped and the doors opened. "A monster walked in to our home, Andy, and he took something very precious. He isn't going to take my ability to face it." She looked up at him, eyes sad. "I may never be the same, but he won't take everything."

He returned her gaze, brows still drawn together in a frown. Andy's bottom lip jutted out. "Yeah, okay," he decided. He reached out and held a hand against the open elevator door to keep it from closing again. "He won't take anything else." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Let's get out of here. We'll go feed some ducks for a little while, then we'll stop by our place."

She let him draw her out of the elevator. Sharon walked with him down another hall and through a set of double, glass doors. As they left the Medical Examiner's office, she pursed her lips at him. "Ducks, Andy? Really?" She shook her head at him. "We're not that old, honey."

"Well you might not be looking it, but I'm definitely feeling it." He covered her hand with his, where it rested against the crook of his arm. He slanted a look at her as they walked. "Just one duck?"

Sharon only shook her head at him. She hugged his arm a little tighter. She wished she felt like smiling. He was doing all he could to keep her from falling into the darkness; she only hoped she wouldn't lose him in it instead. "No ducks."

"You're probably right. It's a bad idea." Andy thought about it as they strode down the sidewalk. They had left the car in the garage at the end of the block, since he wasn't sure how long they would be. It was better than risking a meter, especially since they were in Ricky's rental, and not one of their own vehicles. His bottom lip jutted out. Maybe it was good they were going by the condo. They could pick up one of the cars, except he didn't like the idea of her driving, not right now, now while she was distracted by her grief. He'd have Ricky or Emily get a ride over. One of them could drive the rental back. "First we're feeding the ducks," he continued, "the next thing we know, we're obsessed with them and you're decorating the place with ugly lamps."

"Oh god." Sharon stopped walking. She looked up at him. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth. "The lamps, Andy." She laid a hand against his chest. He looked concerned, but she was struggling to put the shift in her thoughts to words. "When Patrice moved in with the Lieutenant. He asked Rusty to help him move some things to storage. Naturally he didn't rent a large enough space, and somehow Rusty decided that it would be a good idea to bring it all back to the condo. Remember?"

He nodded slowly. "I don't think I had ever heard your voice reach that pitch before." She was pretty bothered by it, finding all of Provenza's crap piled in the middle of her place. The lamps had been particularly troubling, she couldn't understand why anyone would buy anything so hideous… and then they ended up in Electronics. "It was all gone the next day, but yeah, I remember."

"Mmhm." She chewed on the corner of her lip. "His biggest concern was not that I was going to freak out at seeing it all, but that Patrice was going to find out and somehow that was going to ruin things for the Lieutenant… even though he didn't understand why the Lieutenant was going to so many extremes." Her fingers curled inward and she clasped the front of his sweater. "Andy. Is he okay?" She hadn't really seen him since the world tipped on its axis and turned upside down, the earlier encounter notwithstanding.

He blinked at her. That was not where he thought she was going with this, but then, he wasn't entirely sure what she was trying to say anyway. Andy relaxed a little. His lips turned down while affection filled his eyes. "I don't really know," he admitted. "We talked last night, but…" He shrugged at her. "What's okay?"

"Yes." She relaxed her hand and smoothed down his sweater. "That appears to be the new normal," she said, both sadness and disbelief coloring her tone.

"For now." Andy took her hand again and laced their fingers together as they began walking again. "It's the new normal for now." When she only hummed at him, he knew not to push.

They made their way to the car and drove away from downtown. If only it would be just as easy to drive away from all the darkness and the pain.

 **-TBC-**


	7. Chapter 7

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

* * *

 **Chapter 7**

The walk around the lake was exactly what they needed. Sharon was beginning to feel a little hemmed in at the Provenza's home. She was grateful to them, and they were definitely wonderful friends, but it wasn't a large space and now that her children had arrived, it was feeling even smaller. One more night, she told Andy, and only because Emily and Ricky had only just arrived and she didn't want to move them so quickly.

Going back to the condo was surreal. Sharon didn't know how she would feel. Stepping inside it felt alien. It was cold and unfamiliar. Everything felt off, it was as if the very sense of her home had been stolen. Sharon looked around the familiar walls, but she felt like she was looking in through a two-way mirror. It was her home, but it wasn't. There wasn't much that had been disturbed, but Sharon could see the signs of a processed crime scene. Most of the activity would have been down the hall, she knew.

She joined Andy in their room. They were quiet as they pulled clothes out of the closet and laid them on the bed. Their bags, still packed from their honeymoon, remained standing near the closet. While Andy moved around the bedroom, retrieving the items she asked for, Sharon laid her suitcase on the bed and opened it. She quietly pulled clothes out of it and sorted them between laundry and dry cleaning.

They packed enough for a few days, for both of them, in that single bag. While Sharon focused on fitting his jeans in next to hers, Andy returned to the closet. He hung a garment bag on the open door and stepped inside to choose a suit for himself. "Which dresses do you want?" She would need two, one for mass and another for the funeral.

"The black Armani and the blue cashmere," she answered automatically. Sharon thought about it while they were sitting, enjoying the quiet at Silver Lake. She didn't want to linger at the condo any longer than they had to. She had also decided she wouldn't wear a jacket. She normally wore a sweater to church, and while she thought about that, she tucked a pair of jeans into the suitcase and turned. She walked down the hall to the outer rooms. There was a beige, cashmere sweater that she liked for church hanging in the entry closet. While she was at it, she retrieved the black sweater that would go well with the Armani dress.

Sharon draped both of them over her arm and stepped over to the desk for a moment. The mail had been piling up there while they were gone. She decided to sort through it and take with them what needed their immediate attention. She was stacking it together with the checkbook when she heard a loud crash.

"Andy?" Her head snapped around toward the bedroom. She dropped it all, including the sweaters, and hurried back to the bedroom. " _Andy_?" She entered the room as he was walking out of the closet. Her gaze swept over him as she quickly checked to make sure that he was okay, he had a cluster of suspenders in one hand and he was favoring the other. "What happened?"

"Nothing." He told her, voice clipped, "It's fine." He walked over to the dresser and dropped the suspenders on the surface. He opened the bottom left drawer, where Ricky said they had hidden the suspenders they had replaced. He forgot, until he picked up the hanging rack that he kept them on, Andy had completely forgotten that Ricky had told them about the prank he and his brother had prepared for him.

Sharon's brows lifted when he jerked a handful of multicolored suspenders out of a drawer and walked to the bed with them. He didn't even bother to separate them as he stuffed them into the bag. Without her eyes leaving him, she moved further into the room. She walked around to the closet and peered in to it.

The space was a walk-in, not very large, but they made it work. They had shoved a small upright dresser into it when he moved in. The dresser held most of his personal items, ties, t-shirts and the like. Suspenders, however, those got a special place of honor on a couple of hanging racks. She always found it rather amusing that he would stack his silk ties in a drawer, but hang the suspenders. She loved that man, though, and all of his quirks. Sharon arched a brow at the dent in the wall over the dresser. That wasn't there before. The shelf that stood adjacent to it also had a couple of shelves lying askew, and the shoes that had been placed on them were now on the floor.

Sharon backed slowly out of the closet. She looked at her husband again. He was flexing his fingers and holding his hand close to his chest. She walked over and stood in front of him. She held out her hand and tilted her head at him. Her lips were pressed in to a thin line while she waited. When he sighed and placed is hand in hers, Sharon turned it over. His knuckles were red and beginning to bruise, and one of them was oozing blood. " _Andy_."

She was frowning at him now. He ground his teeth together. "I told you it was fine." Andy tried to tug his hand away from her, but winced when her grip on it tightened. "It's fine, Sharon. Not the first time I've bruised it, and I'm pretty sure it won't be the last time, okay?" The feelings that had led to that moment were still simmering, still churning away in his belly, hot and bitter, and probably enough to get him in some trouble.

"Okay?" Her thumb smoothed over his bruising middle knuckle. "No, Andrew, it is not okay. What happened?" She let go of his hand and folded her arms across her chest. "What made you feel like you needed to punch the wall and kick the shelf?" She had an idea, but she wanted him to say it. She _needed_ him to say it, and Sharon thought, he needed to say it too.

"I forgot, okay?" Andy turned away from her. He walked across the room and ripped a handful of tissues out a box on Sharon's bedside table. He wadded them up and pressed them against the bleeding cut his antics had caused. "I forgot about the damn joke the boys were going to play on us when we got home. I was picking out a suit for the funeral, and my black suspenders weren't where I left them."

"So you thought it would be a good idea to attack my Manolos instead?" Her lips pursed. Sharon shook her head at him. "I thought you actually understood," she said, a little bewildered. "I honestly thought that if anyone got it, you did. You certainly talk a good game, Flynn, but when it comes down to it, that's all it is. You're all talk." She had his attention now. He was staring at her, a little astonished, and just a little bit irritated too. "I'm not a delicate flower. I am not a precious cupcake. I do not need to be handled and I really do not need some big, strong, man walking around here acting like he has to be strong for me."

His jaw clenched. Andy ground his teeth together. "That's not what I'm doing," he said quietly, carefully. The anger he felt earlier was simmering a little closer to the surface than he would like. His dark eyes burned, almost black with the emotions he was trying to hold back. "I have never treated you like you need to be protected."

"What do you call this?" She waved a hand at his injured fist. "You have been walking around doing whatever you can to make everything okay for _me_ and the minute that you actually feel an honest emotion of your own, you're hiding it from me. I don't need you to take care of me, Andy," she told him, enunciating every word just in case he still couldn't comprehend it. "I have allowed myself to lean on you, I did that because I thought we were in this together. I thought we were partners in this, obviously I was wrong. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing here trying to convince me that everything is okay when it is anything but." She drew a breath. Her heart was beating quickly. She was feeling a little light headed, but she slowed her breathing and concentrated on returning his dark gaze with one of her own. " _What happened_?"

He could feel the tension in his shoulders as the muscles bunched. A muscle in his cheek ticked from the force of his clenched jaw. Andy shook his head at her and turned away. He only walked so far as the chair by the dresser. He sat down on it and leaned forward, so his arms were draped across his knees. "They short-sheeted the damn bed," he said quietly, gaze now focused on the floor. "I don't even want to know if I've got another bottle of aftershave in the bathroom. Fraternity house pranks, Ricky probably came up with that crap himself. The suspenders… that was Rusty. Ricky wouldn't have bothered, but…" He lifted his head turned it. He looked at the tangled mess of elastic on the dresser. "The blue ones, they're not a joke. Ricky wouldn't have gotten those."

Sharon walked over and lifted the cluster of suspenders. She sorted through them until she found the blue ones he meant. "Dodgers," she said quietly. She drew her bottom lip between her teeth while she studied them. They were actually very nice, and not a joke at all. No, Ricky would not have gotten those for him. He was a Giants fan. If it had been Ricky, the suspenders would be orange and depicting the logo of _his_ favorite team. She wound the elastic around her hand and let her thumb trace over the logo.

"The kid wasn't just indulging his brother's interesting sense of humor," Andy told her. "He was in it. You know, it hasn't been easy, but the kid had finally come around." He shrugged at her. "I guess, he just really, _finally_ came around."

The air left her lungs in a rush. "Officially welcoming the new stepfather into the family," she whispered, repeating Ricky's words to them. She expected that silliness from her elder son. Rusty had made it more than a prank, probably because he was so hard on Andy in the beginning. Sharon carried the suspenders with her and walked over to sit on the padded bench at the foot of the bed across from where Andy was seated.

"I'm not trying to protect you from this," he told her. Andy met her gaze. His voice rasped in the quiet room. "You're already carrying enough, Emily and Ricky lost their brother. You lost your son. That's enough for anyone to worry about."

Sharon laid the suspenders across her lap and leaned forward. She took his loosely clasped hands in hers. "You are not unimportant. What you are feeling matters just as much to me. It's okay if you lose it. Holding this in isn't doing me any favors, and it isn't going to help you either. Where has it gotten us? The wall is going to have to be fixed, and you've hurt your hand. I love you, Andy, even when you're being an idiot, and right now you are definitely being an idiot. What am I going to do if I lose you too? No one needs you to be the strong one. This has been devastating for all of us and it's not over yet."

"Taking care of you is what I have to do to get us through this," he told her. "Not because you're delicate or weak, but that's how I get through this too," he admitted. "The thing is, if I lose you, I've got nothing. You don't need me, but I need you."

Sharon moved across the small space between them and settled across his lap. She clasped his face in her hands and stared intently into his face. "I'm not going anywhere. You aren't going to lose me," she promised, voice thick with emotion.

"Aren't I?" His arms moved around her waist. "You already said it, Sharon. This changes everything. It changes you. It's more than having you here, it's everything else."

"Maybe." She shrugged a shoulder at him. "I don't know what comes next. The next hour, the next day, the next week, it's all completely blank to me. I'm not going to say that we'll figure it out, because I just don't know. I will still love you, that won't change." Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and she tucked her face against his neck. "So please don't hide from me."

"I won't." His hands slid up her back. Andy held her close. "You'll get it all. Are you ready for that."

She lifted her head and looked at him again. Her eyes were moist. "I married that." Sharon combed her fingers over his hair. "I don't care if we fight. I don't care if you have to yell because it's too much and you can't stand it anymore. I can take it. Marrying you didn't change that. You've yelled at me plenty before." When he rolled his eyes at her, she draped her arms around his neck again. "I'm not going to break, but if I do, I want it to be with you."

Andy wasn't sure that made a lot of sense, but not a lot did anymore. The world was, as she already mentioned, upside down. He reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "So what you're saying is, we're in this together, even if we're broken?"

"Even if." She laid her head against his shoulder again. "I have to get the kids through this, and figure out how to keep breathing when it hurts so badly, and if I fall apart, I want to know that you're going to fall apart with me. I don't need strong and silent, I need you."

His hand moved in to her hair. Andy rested his cheek atop her head. "Then you've got me. You've always got me, Sharon." His eyes closed. She felt so small in his arms, but she wasn't small. Inside, under all the grief and anger, she was still there. "Let's get Rusty's suit, finish packing this stuff, and get out of here," he told her. He didn't want to be there anymore than she did.

"Mmhm." She didn't bother moving, not yet. She turned her face in to his neck and pressed a kiss to the warm skin just beneath his ear. "I'll do it." Sharon felt him grow stiff. "I can't avoid it forever, Andy. It might as well be now, when it's just you and me, and we're already both feeling raw."

"Yeah," he sighed. His hand rubbed her back again. "Okay." Andy kissed the top of her head. "You get the suit, I'll finish up in here. Did you want your sweaters too?"

Sharon smiled against his skin. He knew her so well. "Yes. They're out by the desk. I was in the process of getting them and the mail when you decided to punish my shoes."

Andy groaned quietly. "Why do I think you're more worried about your shoes than my hand?" She pinched his side as she started unfolding herself from his lap. "You get the suit, I'll get the other stuff."

She stood up and smoothed her hands down over her sweater and jeans. She studied him for a moment, but he seemed to be okay now. "Just give me a few minutes." She touched his shoulder and then she turned. She went through the bathroom, and once in the hall, she drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. The door was open, and through it she could see some of the clutter left behind by SID.

Drawers had been opened and closed, there were still dark smudges from where the room had been dusted for prints. Items had been moved around. The entire room had been searched. Sharon stepped inside and immediately turned to the closet. She slid the door open and pressed her lips tightly together as her eyes moved over the line of shirts and jeans. His suits and dress shirts were hanging to one side, organized by preference instead of color.

A sad smile touched her lips as she lifted the dark charcoal suit that was his favorite and drew it out of the closet. She chose the powder blue shirt he had favored to go with it. Sharon closed the closet, and with her gaze still averted from the center of the room, and her heart beating wildly, she stepped over to the dresser. In the top drawer, folded just as Andy had taught him, there was a small selection of ties. She felt tears sting her eyes at the memory.

Andy was a little particular about how he hung his suits in the closet, and the suspenders. Ties were carefully and loosely folded. He told Rusty it was so that the clamps from the hangers wouldn't leave a mark. The same was true of just draping them over a hanger. If they stayed in the closet too long, they'd crease, he said. So he showed Rusty how to fold them so that they wouldn't wrinkle. Sharon's teeth scraped across her bottom lip as she picked up the gray and blue striped tie; she picked this one out for him. She got it for him when he told her that he was going to be interning for Andrea.

Sharon closed the drawer and squared her shoulders. Her eyes closed, and she concentrated on taking slow, even breaths. She set her jaw before she turned. The blankets and sheets had been stripped from the bed. Sharon knew that they would be. It would all have been taken, checked in as evidence. The mattress remained, and in the center of it, the dark stain that told the tale of how her son had died.

Her eyes lifted to the wall above the bed. Andy told her about the note. She knew that it was there. Her lip curled as she finally read it for herself. Sharon exhaled quietly, slowly.

 _The mother is next._

"Come for me," she said softly. "I dare you. If you don't, I will find you, and I _will_ kill you."

 **-TBC-**


	8. Chapter 8

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** Grief can be all consuming. It can feel like the sadness will never end, or the tears will never stop. It is illogical and irrational. In my experience, it tends to be all over the place from one moment to the next.

* * *

 **Chapter 8**

The sound of muffled laughter woke Sharon from an already fitful sleep. Without the sedative, sleep had been a long time in coming. She considered taking half of one of the pills, but the groggy feeling she woke up with that morning kept her from changing her mind.

Sharon lifted her head and swept a hand over her face. She pushed her hair back and took a minute to reorient herself. Andy was snoring quietly beside her, and pale moonlight from the window beside the bed lit the room in pale shadows of grey and yellow. They were still in the Provenza's guest room, but she and Andy had discussed checking into a hotel the next day. They were going to talk to their hosts about it over breakfast.

For now, Sharon moved carefully away from her husband so that she wouldn't wake him and slipped off the bed. She picked up her favorite thick, brown cardigan from where it was draped across the chair by the door and pulled it around herself. She had gone to bed in one of Andy's old t-shirts and a pair of sweats. She was fairly certain that Lieutenant Provenza had never heard of using the energy saver settings on his thermostat since the thing was set to freezing. She shivered as she slipped out of the room and walked down the hall.

She moved toward the sound of the laughter, and not surprisingly, it took her to the den. Light was glowing underneath the closed, sliding door. Sharon shook her head as she eased it open. She was faced with her children, seated on their beds, surrounded by blankets and pillows, and snickering, despite the late hour. They only had a single lamp turned on, but her eyes still squinted against the light in the room.

Sharon shivered again and frowned at the pair as she slipped into the room, arms wrapped tightly around herself, hoping to preserve some warmth. "Do you have any idea what time it is?"

The question was hissed quietly, but they both heard it over the sound of their laughter. Their heads turned toward her. They stared, wide-eyed, at having been caught. For just a moment they were kids again, caught up way past bedtime, and about to lose all access to the television.

Ricky reacted as he always did in that situation. He immediately pointed at his sister. "She started it."

Emily's jaw dropped open. "Traitor."

They stared at one another, and as Sharon watched, dissolved into another fit of quiet giggles. They were at least trying to keep the volume down. Sharon rolled her eyes at them and stepped further into the room before sliding the door closed behind her. "Enough," she told them. Sharon turned her wrist toward her, and then lifted it closer to her face when she realized that she had forgotten her glasses. "Good grief, it's almost two in the morning. What are you doing awake?"

"We couldn't sleep." Emily shifted over on the sofa bed and made room for her mother. "It's almost five at home. I should have crashed by now, but I couldn't turn it off. My head was just full of so much."

"Same." Ricky shrugged. "We just started talking and I guess the night got away from us. We didn't mean to wake you." He picked up the bottle that he had hidden, on instinct, when she walked into the room. Ricky shook it at her. "Want some?"

Sharon winced at them. "Please tell me that's not flavored vodka, I know I raised you both better than this." She sat down beside Emily and tucked her chilled feet underneath the blankets before accepting the bottle from Ricky. She turned it so she could read the label and groaned. "Lime. My children are sitting up in the middle of the night passing a bottle of lime vodka back and forth like they're at summer camp. I do not believe this."

"It was this or the Merlot that we picked up earlier," Emily told her. "We knew you'd never forgive us for drinking wine from the bottle. We're not heathens." She held out a hand and smiled when her mother handed the bottle to her.

"Thank god for small favors." Sharon pulled the sweater more tightly around her. "What was so funny? You almost woke the entire house."

The siblings looked at one other. Seconds ticked by before Ricky shifted on the rollaway bed and leaned forward. He was sitting cross-legged with a blanket wrapped around his hips and legs. "Nothing, everything, memories mostly."

"Rusty memories," Emily explained. "I was just telling Ricky about the first time that I called after Rusty moved in. He answered the phone and I had no idea why this kid was picking up at your place, after dinner, on a work night. I asked him who he was and he asked me why it mattered. I told him that my name was Emily and the polite response would have been telling me _his_ name. Rusty said…" Emily shook her head, smiling again at the memory, "he said _oh god, this entire family is obsessed with rules_ , and then he hung up on me."

"I remember that." Sharon covered her face with her hand. She hummed, smiling in spite of the sadness the memory produced. It was a good one, and she knew why Emily would recall it. The event happened just a few days after she took Rusty home with her. He was still in emergency care at the time. She was in the shower when Emily called, and hadn't had a chance to tell either of her children about the new situation yet. "Those were some very interesting times for us."

"That's one way of putting it." Ricky reached for the bottle when Emily passed it back to him. "We were going to drink a toast, but we forgot to get glasses earlier. We were afraid we'd wake someone if we went hunting for them after everyone was in bed, so the bottle it was." He took a drink and made a face. It wasn't bad, but it still had a lot of bite. "Do you remember, a couple of summers ago, we rented that boat and sailed it up to Santa Barbara and back. Rusty had never been on a boat before, and he was freaking out. He was sure that we were going to sink or get eaten by sharks."

"Hm." Sharon looped her arm through Emily's and leaned against her daughter as they shared the blankets. "Yes. That was a good trip. It might have gone a little easier if you hadn't watched _Jaws_ with him the night before."

Emily snorted a quiet laugh. "God Ricky, you didn't?" She reached for the vodka bottle drew it back to her lap. "That's horrible, no wonder he was freaking out."

"Oh, like that's any worse than half the things you did to me when we were growing up," Ricky reminded her.

Before Emily could open her mouth to respond, Sharon gave her a long, knowing look. "You used to put Ricky in the dryer, Emily. I think your brother gets a pass for poor movie choice."

"I never turned it on," Emily reminded them. She rolled her eyes at both of them. She held the bottle against her chest and shook her head. "Also, he was three, he was almost as big as I was, and he kept taking my ballet shoes and hiding them."

"You're always three," Sharon murmured quietly. She reached over and slipped the bottle out of her daughter's hands. She really shouldn't have any, not with her medication, but a sip wouldn't hurt. "That's what I told Rusty. Ricky was visiting; it was just after I told you both that I was going to adopt Rusty. He could sense his brother's reluctance. I told him that when I was pregnant with your brother, you hadn't wanted a younger sibling either." Her lips turned down as sadness filled her expression. "He reminded me that you were only three. So I told him that," she said. "What I meant is that children are always toddlers when their lives are changing and they are resistant to that change." She took a sip from the bottle and grimaced. "My god, this is terrible." Sharon pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and held the bottle out for one of them to take. "You are both hard-working, successful adults, you couldn't pick up a bottle Grey Goose? Or Svedka? You're drinking the cheapest rotgut that you could get your hands on. Dear god, next time at least take the forty dollars out of my purse like you did when you were teenagers."

"One time." Ricky pointed a finger at her. "One time I did that, and I was going to tell you about it when you woke up." His mother had just come off a thirty-six hour shift and was sleeping like a log. "I had to have new RAM for my computer. It was an emergency."

"God, Ricky." Emily was staring at him. "You are such a nerd," she deadpanned. "How did you not get beat-up every day of high school?"

"I'm a nerd that can run really fast and catch footballs." Ricky smirked at her. "I also win trophies. Smart, athletic, and good-looking. I am the whole package."

"Modest too," Emily managed to say, just before she dissolved into laughter alongside her mother.

"Do any of you know what time it is?"

The voice came from the door and had all of them looking up. Ricky, who had reclaimed the bottle, hid it behind himself. "We're in trouble now," he drawled, "the stepdad is awake."

"Were they still too loud?" Sharon lifted her head from where it was resting against Emily's shoulder. "I thought they had lowered the volume considerably. I'm sorry, honey. We didn't mean to wake you."

"You didn't. The den shares a wall with the bathroom," he jerked his head in the direction of the guest bath. "I just rolled over and you weren't there." He was worried, so he had gone to find her. He heard the muffled conversation from the bathroom. "It's late. What are you all doing up?"

"Just talking." Sharon began untangling herself from the blankets. "But you're right. It is very late. We have an early day tomorrow, and I'm sure that it's going to be a long one," she told her children. "Turn the light off and get some sleep." She stood up and turned to each one. "I love you," she kissed the top of Emily's head and leaned over to repeat the gesture with Ricky. "And I love you," she told him. "But I mean it, bed, both of you." Sharon pulled the sweater tight again and walked over to join her husband at the door. She turned back and pointed a finger at her kids. "No more of that rotgut. I'm sure that we can find you something lime flavored that isn't going to burn holes in your esophagus."

They both rolled their eyes at her. "Yes mom. We love you," Emily straightened her blankets and laid down on the sofa bed.

"We promise. Only expensive vodka from now on." Ricky screwed the top back on and put it on the table beside the rollaway bed. "Goodnight mom." She waved at them as she left, and Ricky waited until the door was closed before he reached up and turned off the lamp. As he got comfortable, he snorted. "He rolled over and she wasn't there? Is that really a thing?"

"I don't know, I guess." In the dark, and mostly unseen, Emily shrugged at him. Neither of them had ever really had much in the way of long-term relationships before. Emily liked to say it was because she was focused on her career, but truthfully, she just didn't want to get trapped in an unhappy relationship the way her mother had. Her mind had started to change recently. She didn't know if it was age, or just that she felt more content, more settled in her life, but she was starting to want that. She wanted a relationship and a partner to share things with. "It was kind of sweet though, wasn't it?"

"I guess." Ricky turned his face into his pillow with a sigh. "As a general rule, I usually try not to think about who mom is in bed with."

Emily groaned and rolled over to her other side. "I begged my mother for a sister," she muttered.

"Yeah, and look how that turned out." He yawned. Now that the light was off and he was still, Ricky was starting to actually feel tired. "We got a snotty stepsister instead. We should stop asking mom for things. Focus on the stepdad. I think he could be a pushover."

"He caught us up past our bedtime and we're going to bed, Ricky." Emily grinned into her pillow. "That doesn't sound like much of a pushover to me."

He was silent for a moment. Ricky was starting to drift, entering that place just before sleep when everything felt light. "Yeah," he mumbled, "we just got parented. Rusty would have loved that."

Emily hummed in response. "He really would have," she whispered. She kept her eyes closed, and if a few tears leaked out to dampen her pillow, she pretended not to notice and concentrated on going to sleep instead.

Sharon sent Andy on to bed and stopped in the bathroom before she joined him. She brushed her teeth while she was in there, to get the taste of the cheap alcohol out of her mouth. Sharon shuffled quickly across the hall a couple of minutes later, where she dropped her sweater on the chair again and quickly got back into the bed. "I'm beginning to believe that thermostat has a _Siberia_ setting." She pulled the blankets over herself and scooted close to her husband, seeking his warmth.

Andy chuckled quietly and gathered her close. When her feet slid between his calves, he grunted. The woman had the coldest feet of anyone he had ever met, and she refused to wear socks to bed. They were like little blocks of ice, her feet, and she insisted on putting them on him. His hand rubbed up and down her arm as she settled against him. "He thinks he needs to be generating frost on every surface in the house to be able to sleep." It didn't really bother him, Andy usually slept pretty warm, but he knew that Sharon was always cold.

In a few minutes Sharon knew that she would be pushing him off of her because she would be _too_ warm, but for now the heat that he was generating felt wonderful. Her eyes closed and she sighed. She hoped that she would be able to get back to sleep, but the trouble she had earlier wasn't filling her with a great sense of confidence. "Emily is going to be impossible to deal with tomorrow," she predicted. "She's never been exactly cheerful when she doesn't get a full night's sleep."

"What were they talking about?" Andy suspected he already knew. Everyone processed grief in their own way; it was only natural that they would want to remember better times, given the horror of what had happened.

"Just memories," she said quietly. "It was good for them. I just wish they hadn't managed to almost wake the entire house in the process." Her arms were folded between them, but she stroked his chest with the backs of her fingers. "I think this was just one more reason why we should check in to a hotel tomorrow."

"Yeah." Andy couldn't disagree with that. He was also feeling like it was time. "You still want to choose one downtown?" They had plenty of options to choose from, but she didn't seem inclined to stay out near the beach, or even in one of the hotels in Los Feliz or Beverly Hills.

"Yes." Sharon sighed again. "It's closer to St. Joseph's and the office would be right there. I think that would be the most convenient option, don't you?"

"You're not wrong." Andy frowned at the thought that she was already thinking about going back to the office. "You're not thinking about going back to work already, are you?"

His tone made her smile. He was skeptical, and resigned. She wondered if he would fight her on it if she answered in the affirmative. "No, not yet," she told him. "We would just be nearby if we were needed."

"Okay." He combed his fingers through her hair. That sounded better, even if he didn't entirely believe her. "Let's get some sleep. I want to catch Provenza before he leaves."

"Hm." She hummed in response. Yes, she would like to discuss their move with both their hosts, and the Lieutenant had been leaving early and spending long hours at the PAB.

Sharon closed her eyes but sleep was elusive. She eventually rolled away from Andy, although she still managed to keep her feet tucked beneath his very warm calves. She lay in bed, listening to the sound of his quiet snores, and the faint ticking of the wall clock, until she finally decided to concede the fact that sleep was never going to come. Sharon knew when she decided to leave the bed that she was risking he would come looking for her again, but she decided that the hour had grown close enough toward morning that it was worth that risk.

This time when she left the room, she wrapped herself in the thick, navy bathrobe that they had gotten for Andy when he had his heart attack the previous year. She had been _borrowing_ it more and more often the last several weeks. It was especially comfortable in chilled places, like hospitals, or Provenza's makeshift Siberian sanctuary. She made her way down the hall and into the kitchen where she used the electric kettle to make herself a cup of tea before stepping outside with it.

They didn't have much of a view, but they did have a pair of wide, Adirondack chairs on a small patio. It was just a few degrees warmer outside than it was inside, and Sharon enjoyed that as she curled up in one of the chairs and sat, watching as the sky began to grow grey with the first minutes of dawn. It was quiet out. There was only the sound of birds and the distant sound of traffic to intrude upon her peace. Quiet mornings like this one were not unusual to her, although she would have normally spent her time on her balcony.

Sharon leaned her head back and rested it against the chair. Her eyes closed as she recalled the last morning she spent like that. She couldn't sleep, her mind was weighed down with thoughts of her newly diagnosed condition. Only a few days had passed since her collapse, their case was seeming more and more impossible to solve, and she was still worried that going ahead with the wedding would be a mistake for Andy. She loved him. She didn't always have the words to express just how much, but she hadn't wanted him to be stuck in an untenable situation when his own health was a concern. She was so worried that he would end up having to care for her, and she didn't want to be a burden.

Not to him or her children.

Those thoughts may not have been unfounded, but they were a little skewed. Sharon was making it entirely too complicated and she realized that when Rusty put it in the most simplistic terms possible.

He found her on the balcony that morning. Andy was still asleep, but Rusty had an early meeting with Hobbs before he was supposed to be in court with her that morning. Sharon didn't plan to tell him what was bothering her, but he knew that if she was on the balcony that early, and already through her second cup of tea, it must be serious. She told him, but only to allay his fears that her condition was worse than previously indicated. When she finished, he just looked at her and shrugged.

" _Seriously mom, do you really think not getting married is going to change anything? What are you going to do? Kick him out? Because that's the only way he would not try to take care of you if you were sick, married or not. Even I think that would be a crap move, and I'm the most selfish person we know."_

A single tear slipped out of the corner of her eye. Sharon reached up and wiped it away. He had a way of putting things in the most blunt terms. He wasn't always right, and she often corrected him, but on this he was not wrong. She was glad for moments like that, when his simplicity cut through all of her denial, or stopped her habit of overthinking things. She was thankful they had not postponed the wedding, and that better sense had prevailed. It was a perfect day.

Almost. It was an almost perfect day. Sharon refused to think of the glaring absence of her new stepchildren. Instead she thought of her children, and the happy smiles they had all worn. It was heartening to know that they weren't only happy for her, they were happy for themselves too. With her eyes closed Sharon could picture her favorite wedding photo just as clearly as if she were holding it in her hand. She didn't know what had prompted the moment, but Ricky and Rusty had been looking at one another, standing with a table between them. Ricky had been wearing that crooked grin of his that promised nothing but trouble, while Rusty was pointing at him, a knowing smile on his own face. Emily was standing with her youngest brother, clutching his arm as she bent forward, laughing at whatever mischief the boys were causing.

Sharon wiped away another tear and sniffled quietly. It was hard to believe that any of them would ever be that happy again, nor that carefree.

Had it really only been a month ago?

"Does Flynn know you're skulking around in the backyard like this?"

The voice startled her. Sharon looked over, head inclining as the Lieutenant stepped out onto his patio. He wore a sweater over a t-shirt and slacks, and she wondered if that was in deference to his houseguests. It was another reason for them to get out of his hair as soon as they could. She hummed quietly.

"No. With any luck, he's still asleep." She shifted in her seat and watched him come closer. "I didn't want to wake him. One of us should be rested."

He sat in the empty chair beside her and leaned back, getting comfortable. "It's not exactly the view that you're used to," he nodded to the small yard and the tall wooden fence that blocked the view of the neighbor's yard. "So you can't be sitting out here for the spectacular beauty," he drawled. "I thought your doctor wanted you to rest?"

"I thought your wife wanted you to cut back on the caffeine," Sharon shot back. She knew very well how much coffee he had throughout the course of a given day, and if he was starting this early, he would have enough to wake a small neighborhood by noon. She never commented on it, and would appreciate the same regard.

"Fair enough." Provenza lifted his coffee cup, but continued to study her. "Before you ask, I don't have any updates. There's been no sign of him and we're looking everywhere we can." His eyes narrowed. "Flynn said he took you back to the condo yesterday?"

"He did," she admitted quietly, "we needed to get a few things." Sharon studied the contents of her nearly empty teacup. "I'm not surprised, really. Stroh had enough time to get into the city and out again before we even got home. We should be looking beyond Los Angeles."

"We?" Provenza shook his head at her. "Like I said, we're looking everywhere we can. Howard called in some favors, the bureau is looking too. That's all I've got right now." He stretched his legs out in front of him and grimaced when his knee creaked. "Mason is going to pull us off of this if we don't have any results soon. You know that."

"I know." Sharon didn't want to think about it. Her brows drew together in a deep frown. She sighed. There was nothing they could do but keep looking until that happened, and when it did, she had a few favors of her own to exchange. "Let's not borrow trouble yet," she decided. "Andy and I will be back in a few more days. You're short staffed right now, but resolving that may help."

Provenza scowled at her. She sounded just as confident as she usually did when making decisions for the team, that wasn't surprising, but the conviction in her tone that _she_ would be helping them was. "You know that having you work this case isn't exactly… by the book?" He studied her carefully. He knew she wasn't objective, she never was where Rusty was involved. Who among them could be? "What happened to _the rules_?"

"Hm." Sharon's lips pursed for a moment. She rolled her eyes toward him. "The rules." She shook her head at him. "There was nothing in that rulebook about burying my son, Lieutenant. You don't honestly believe that I am going to sit this out, do you?"

"You don't honestly think Flynn isn't going to have a stroke when he hears that, do you?" Provenza felt like pinching the bridge of his nose. "I get it, but Stroh has slipped through the cracks of the system too many times. If we're going to get him on this, we have to do it better than by the book."

Her brows lifted in surprise. "Lieutenant," she began, and then stopped. "Louie." Her voice dropped an octave until she sounded deceptively calm. "We aren't really planning on bringing him in, are we? I think you and I both know better." Her brow arched. "We will operate precisely inside the law, but when it comes to Phillip Stroh, he is dangerous and will be treated as such. It is our responsibility to make sure that he has taken the very last life that he is going to take. If we look at the scorecard, the LAPD is barely in the game. I am done guessing, I am done waiting. We find him this time, and we make sure that he is never able to get away again."

Provenza stared back at her. He couldn't fault her reasoning. Their failures where Stroh was concerned had brought them to this point. They thought they had him once, and while losing him was wholly the fault of the county sheriff's office, they were never very successful at keeping him in custody either. He was no smarter than any other murderer they had dealt with over the years. He was not a _Bond_ villain. He just knew them as well as they knew themselves. They allowed that to happen. The Lieutenant nodded slowly. "Never again," he agreed. The odds were low that they would ever find Stroh again, and he was sure this was mostly her grief talking. For now, he would agree, because it was what she needed to hear. He didn't exactly _disagree_ either.

"Thank you." Sharon sat back in her chair again and closed her eyes. "Don't worry about Andy. He's going to be fine. He feels the most useful when he's needed." As much as she wanted him to know and understand that she wasn't fragile, she needed to keep in mind the same was true of her husband.

"That's usually true," Provenza acknowledged. He slanted a look at her, watching her while she sat there, seemingly calm and at rest. "He told me you're going to a hotel today. You know you don't have to do that. You and the little Raydor spawn are welcome to stay here as long as you need to."

Sharon's lips curved into a small smile. "I know that." Her eyes opened again. "We appreciate that, truly. I don't know what we would have done without you, and especially Patrice, but we can't stay indefinitely. There are things we have to do. We're going to be coming and going, I think we would all benefit from having our own space." Her head tilted. "And is there nothing that he doesn't eventually tell you?"

Provenza shrugged at her. "He still won't tell me how he got that busted lip on your second date, so he's got some secrets." He sighed. "I was actually surprised that you stayed this long. The first thing my wife is going to ask," he drawled, with more than a little self pity, "is what I did to make you leave." He gave her a bland look. "You're telling her."

"We were going to tell you both, but I didn't realize that Andy was going to tell you first. My mistake, obviously," she added, tone dripping with sarcasm.

"Obviously." Provenza made a face at her. "He was mine before you came along, I would just like to go on the record with that right now." He looked around them and shivered. "Why are we sitting outside in the cold? Let's go inside. There's coffee and it's a lot warmer."

Sharon simply stared at him. She wondered how the Lieutenant could believe the very low temperature inside his house was even remotely tolerable. She stood when he did, but only because she suspected he would wake Andy and send him out to her if she didn't go back inside. "If your immense generosity has taught me nothing else these past two days, Lieutenant, it is that the identity of the individual tampering with our thermostat at work is a lot closer than I believed."

He shook his finger at her. "Circumstantial evidence. I won't deal. You can't make me." He led the way into the house. "Let's go, I'll pour the coffee and you can tell me how that split lip happened. Flynn won't talk and I know there's a story there."

"On one condition," Sharon agreed, " _I_ will pour the coffee and you will raise the thermostat to something above freezing."

"I take it back," he said, "you've got a deal!"

"Good." She took his cup from him and crossed the kitchen to pour coffee for the both of them. "There really isn't much to tell, he took me to the batting cage on our second date, and I'm afraid we got a little distracted…"

Her very pointed look had his nose wrinkling. "Dear god. I didn't want to know _that_!"

She only shrugged. "A deal is a deal, Lieutenant…" She always fulfilled her end of them, when she was willing to offer one. Sharon wasn't feeling very much like offering deals when it came to their current case, and did not anticipate that changing.

 **-TBC-**


	9. Chapter 9

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** Sorry everyone, updates are about to slow down. There are a couple more chapters written, but I've been hit by a particularly nasty cold bug, and so I've not been lifting anything heavier than a remote for days. I'll get the next chapters out as I can... right now, NyQuil is my friend. Much love for everyone! You're all rockstars.

* * *

 **Chapter 9**

Mid-morning found Sharon and Andy seated at the butcher-block table in the Provenza's kitchen. They had spoken to Patrice about their intention to check in to a hotel, and were not surprised to find out that Provenza had already told her. They weren't in any hurry to rush out, however, and since they couldn't check in until later in the afternoon, they decided to let Ricky and Emily sleep.

There was plenty to keep them occupied until they could check in to the hotel. They had Sharon's appointment with Doctor Torres to keep, and they would have to stop by the mortuary afterward to drop off Rusty's suit and sign more paperwork. There was also the payment to be made. Sharon had carried Rusty on her department benefits, and that had included the same supplemental life insurance policy she had on all of the kids. She hadn't thought about pulling that paperwork, though, neither of them had, not until Andy realized it was one more thing they would have to do.

They had to close Rusty's accounts, pay off any outstanding bills he had, and any number of other activities that would be hard in the days to come. It was something they would have to talk about, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. It was something that could keep for a while.

The appointment with Doctor Torres went well enough. He didn't like Sharon's blood pressure, and he wasn't happy that she wasn't taking the sedative, but her condition was improving. He did an EKG and an echo while she was in the office. Her heart was functioning well, and he saw no reason to increase her medication or move toward more drastic measures.

They might have been relieved, if not for everything else that was happening. Instead of being able to celebrate the fact that Sharon wouldn't have to return to the doctor's office for another month, it was just one more thing checked off of a very long to do list. She would be able to return to work, too, once her Bereavement leave was up, and that was the one thing Torres cautioned her to make sure she did. Stress could make her condition worse, and he put a lot of emphasis on the fact that she wasn't completely recovered. The heart could improve, he reminded them, but only as much as it was allowed to.

The couple left the doctor's office hand in hand. Sharon glanced at her husband from the corner of her eye. His pensive mood was much the same as it had been the first time they left that office. She gave his hand a squeeze. They had been looking forward to today. It was supposed to be the perfect conclusion to their honeymoon, but instead it was a chore. It was just another errand on another day that no longer held any real meaning.

They were both silent as they left the professional complex and crossed the plaza. It wasn't until they crossed the street and started down the block toward the parking garage that either of them spoke again.

"After we get settled in at the hotel this afternoon, I really think you should go to a meeting." They stopped walking and Sharon turned to meet his gaze. "You don't need to be with me every minute."

"I know that." He frowned at her. "That's not the reason I haven't gone. You and the kids have needed me around," he told her. "I thought we agreed that we weren't going to do this, the smothering thing. We just talked about it last night." Andy was more curious than frustrated.

"We did," she agreed. "That's why I think it would be really good if you went out this evening. I will be okay by myself for a little while, assuming of course that the kids aren't with me while you're gone." Sharon laid her hand against his chest. He had opted for a pale green button down that morning. She toyed with one of the buttons and shrugged at him. "This is exactly how we keep from doing that smothering thing that we talked about last night. Go out and do what you have to do. Please?"

"Tired of me already, huh?" Andy shook his head at her. "Yeah, okay." It really was time that he sought out a meeting. He was only going to get by talking to his sponsor for so long. He needed to be able to get away, talk about it with his own peer group. Andy knew how to take care of himself, but he supposed the point was that he needed to actually take the time to _do_ that. "I'll go to a meeting tonight," he told her, "on one condition."

Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. Sharon's head tilted. "I wasn't aware that we were setting conditions on responsible choices of self care. Very well, I'm listening."

"If I'm going out, I'm going to need you to—"

The rest of what he might have said was lost in the echoing squeal of tires as an SUV jumped the curb and stopped in front of them. Another slid to a stop beside them. It took a moment for them to realize that they were seeing flashing lights and uniforms in the seconds between the vehicles stopping and the officers surrounding them. Andy had wrapped an arm around Sharon and drawn her against his side on instinct. His other hand had gone to his belt, but he wasn't wearing his gun. It was locked away in his car, along with his badge.

As he recognized the uniforms and members of their own team, he scowled. "Someone want to tell us what the hell is going on here?"

Julio walked around the hood of the Explorer that had jumped the curb. There was a phone pressed to his ear. "We've got them, Lieutenant. They're both fine."

"Detectives?" Sharon folded her arms across her chest and frowned at the pair. "What happened?" Her eyes moved from Sanchez to Amy, who had gotten out of the car on the passenger side. Her brows lifted while concern colored her face. "Where are my children?"

"Fine." Amy held up her hands, as though to ward off the Commander's concerns. "The Lieutenant sent Nolan and Detective Paige to the house to cover Patrice and your kids. They've already checked in. We couldn't find you."

"We didn't know which medical building your doctor's office was in," Julio said, he was already sliding his phone back into his pocket. "We had to wait for Ricky to look it up for us." He squared his shoulders and looked at the pair. "We've got news."

"I should hope so," Andy shot back, still irritated by the way they were being guarded. "A damn explanation would really help right now."

The two detectives exchanged a look. It was Amy that took a step closer to the pair. "Emma Rios is dead," she told them. "She was found in her car this morning, in the garage on Hill and Broadway, a block away from the District Attorney's office."

"Son of a bitch." Andy threw his arms up in frustration and turned away from them. They thought it was over, but that couldn't be any further from the truth.

Sharon blinked once as she processed the shock of her statement. "I thought DDA Rios had a security detail," she stated carefully, "Where were they?"

"She dismissed them yesterday ma'am," Julio explained. "Rios didn't think it was necessary anymore. Everyone thought Stroh was probably already out of the country. He's not." If nothing else, the new murder had proved that he was still around, and they had more reason than ever to keep looking.

"No, Detective," Sharon ground out, "I would say that he is definitely _not_." Her jaw clenched. It was another death, another senseless killing while they were otherwise occupied. How many other people were going to have to die before they finally put a stop to all of it. Sharon swept her tongue over her teeth. "I take it that we can assume from your dramatic arrival that Emma died some time this morning?"

"Her car checked in to the garage at seven-forty-five," Amy answered. "She had an eight-thirty meeting that she never arrived for. We're pulling footage from the security cameras in and around the garage. The Lieutenant is on site with Tao and Buzz. He sent us to get eyes on the two of you."

Sharon shifted where she stood, pivoted on one heel and stared at Andy's back until he turned again. Their gazes met and held for several long moments. He was the first one to break it. He scrubbed a hand over his face and swore again. She wasn't going to be satisfied standing on the sidelines, not now. Not when they had confirmation that Stroh was definitely still in the city. "What do you want to do?"

He knew her mind almost as well as she did. He wasn't asking because he didn't know. Sharon sighed quietly. He was asking because there was always the chance that she might change her mind before she voiced those thoughts. She knew that he was hoping it would happen this time. Sharon rubbed her lips together for a moment. She was, honestly, sorry that she was going to have to disappoint him. "I will go with the detectives. We should cancel the hotel reservation we made last night. Stroh is resourceful. He may already know where we were planning to stay. I want you to pick up Emily and Ricky, book all of us into another hotel, and leave them with a uniformed detail. They go nowhere without a police escort, even if we are with them." She wasn't taking any chances this time.

Andy rubbed the back of his neck while he considered that. Ideally, they would prefer it if they could get Ricky and Emily to leave town, but there was no guarantee that they would be safe. They also knew there was no way that either of the kids was leaving their mother right now. "I'll swing by and take care of that other thing on the way." They had Rusty's suit in the car, a check for the mortuary, and papers that had to be signed. "I'll see you in a couple of hours."

Her eyes closed. "Right." She hadn't forgotten, but it was easier when she didn't think about it. No, that was a lie. It was always there, an ever present pain in the pit of her stomach. Sharon's eyes opened and she offered him a look that was nearer to a grimace than a sad smile. "Thank you." She stared back at him, for just a moment longer, and then turned to the detectives again. "Let's go, I'll talk to the Lieutenant on the way." She walked toward the Explorer, but stopped when she reached it. "Oh, Andy…"

"I'll bring you something to change into." They were both dressed casually, even if Sharon's brand of casual was a nice sweater and a pair of wool blend slacks. He strode toward the other patrol vehicle and pointed at the officers. "You can drive me to my car." The clock was ticking and they were already too far behind.

Amy fixed Julio with a pointed look, even as she reached out and opened the front passenger door for the Commander. This was exactly what the Lieutenant had told them to avoid. They were supposed to escort the pair to a safe location, where they would meet up with the Commander's other two children, and continue making the arrangements Rusty's funeral. He warned them, specifically, not to allow either of them to talk their way into the investigation. Here they were, though, not bothering to put up even a token resistance to the idea. No one, besides probably the Lieutenant, even knew what was going on with the Commander. She had collapsed at work, and then after getting dizzy a few more times, she had gone out on medical leave. The team knew that she was still under a doctor's care, obviously since that was where they had been instructed to find her. Beyond all of that, no one really knew anything.

From behind the Commander, Julio shrugged. What were they supposed to do? He wasn't going to tell her that she couldn't come with them. The Lieutenant might have _suggested_ that they put her some place safe and leave her there, but he knew better. They _all_ knew better. She might have been distracted by her grief when all of them thought Stroh was probably long gone, but there was no way in hell she was going to sit around wiping tears and picking out flowers now. Julio had known that the moment the call came in that morning. "We should get back to the murder room," was all that he said.

Amy shook her head at him. The Lieutenant was _not_ going to be happy with them. She waited until the Commander was seated before she pushed the door closed. "You're explaining this," she told him.

"I'm not explaining anything," Julio walked around to the driver's side. "I'm just following orders."

"Right." Amy wasn't buying that. Not that she wanted to be the person who told the Commander that she couldn't do something, but he hadn't even tried. Amy climbed into the SUV and sat behind the Commander. She waited until Julio had joined them before asking, "should we go back to the murder room, or are we going to the crime scene?"

Sharon's head inclined as she glanced into the back seat. "It seems to me that the Lieutenant is going to be a little short-handed if he has most of the division out protecting potential victims. Let's join the others, I'd like to get a handle on what is being done." In the meantime, she pulled her badge out of her purse and clipped it to the waist of her trousers, and then she reached for her phone. She wasn't surprised to find several missed calls from both Ricky and Emily. She had left the device on silent while they were in the doctor's office. She began dialing immediately.

Ricky answered on the first ring. "Mom, is this for real?" The detectives wouldn't tell them much, and he didn't know these two well enough to be able to pry the information out of them.

"I'm afraid it is." She relaxed, just a little, at the sound of his voice. "Andy is going to pick you up, he should be there within the hour. Make sure that you are both packed and ready to leave. He's going to check you into a hotel, you'll have uniformed officers protecting you."

"Where are you?" Ricky turned as he spoke and frowned at his sister. "If Andy is coming to get us, what are you doing? Mom…"

The warning note in his tone had her suppressing a sigh. This was expected, but no less tiresome. "Richard," she spoke coolly, with the tenor of her voice dropping, "I understand fully where you would like to take this conversation, but there just isn't time for that right now. It is very important that you and your sister understand that you cannot go anywhere without the uniformed police detail that is being assigned to you."

"Mom, I get that," Ricky's voice pitched higher as frustration filled it. "What I don't get is how you're working right now. Seriously, tell me that you are not on your way to a crime scene to work a case?"

He might have worded it as a question but it was no less than a demand. Sharon's brows rose in response, despite the fact that he couldn't see it. "As a matter of fact that is exactly where I am going. As I said before, we are not going to have this conversation right now. We can do that later, if you would like, otherwise you can direct your concerns to Andy when he arrives. Understood?"

Ricky sighed. He should have known that he wouldn't get very far with her. "Yeah, we understand. Just…" He stopped and shook his head. "Be careful, okay? You're not exactly at your best right now, you know? We worry."

"Yes, thank you for that reminder." She felt like rolling her eyes, but Sharon understood why they were worrying about her. "Ricky," she spoke more softly, warmth filling her tone. "I will see you this evening, and we can talk more. Keep an eye on your sister." Emily might be the oldest, but she was the more impetuous of the pair.

"I can do that. I'll find a dryer to stuff her into if I have to," he drawled sarcastically. "We'll see you later. Love you."

"I love you too." Sharon ended the call and laid her phone in her lap. She pressed the fingers of her other hand against her forehead. Sharon drew a calming breath and let it out slowly. Finally she opened her eyes and looked at the detective beside her. His eyes were on the road, but she knew that he, as well as Amy, had paid attention to every part of that conversation. "Tell me what we already know…"

"Garage security was called when another garage customer noticed that DDA Rios was in her car, but unmoving," Amy began, speaking from the backseat. "When security arrived on scene they discovered that all but the back passenger door were locked. Security gained access to the car, and upon entering, discovered that she was already deceased. It was called in, uniforms identified the body, and it was routed to us."

"According to Kendall, there was a single stab wound." Julio slanted a look at her from the corner of his eye. "Through the chest, probably severing the aorta." The Explorer stopped at a light and he looked at her. "There were cuts on her hands, bruises on her throat. She knew it was happening. She knew who it was."

Sharon got lost in the Detective's dark gaze for a moment. It was burning with the same anger that she could feel simmering beneath the surface of her own emotions. She blinked slowly as realization sank in. "Stroh wanted Emma to know that he was there. She dared to defy him. It made him angry. Rusty was just a loose end." Her jaw clenched. "An inconvenience."

"A message." Julio pointed out. "Rusty was a message. Stroh is here for a reason. It wasn't just about getting rid of a witness. You're right, that was convenient." His lip curled. "Emma wasn't, he tracked her down and waited until she felt comfortable enough to get rid of her security detail. He took her in the garage at her work. That was bold. I'm not sure that he really cares about getting caught anymore, ma'am."

Her eyes narrowed. She had a feeling that Julio was correct about that. To what end, she didn't know. "I suggest we find out if that's true," she said quietly. "We are going to need to put together a list of everyone that might have made Phillip Stroh angry in the last six years. I don't think we should limit it to those in just the immediate area."

Sanchez turned his attention back to the road when the light changed. "You think he might go after the Chief?" That was always a concern where Stroh was involved, but the former Deputy Chief had never seemed particularly worried about it.

"I think we would be mistaken if we did not consider the fact that Brenda may be at the very top of Phillip's list," Sharon replied. "I think we also know that I am on it." She considered the phone in her hand. "How inconvenient it must have been for Phillip to discover that I wasn't home. He wanted me to know that he's coming for me too, so I suggest that we make sure he can see me."

"Commander?" Amy leaned sideways in her seat to be able to gaze more clearly into the front of the vehicle. "Are you suggesting that we use you as bait?"

"Not as bait, Amy," Sharon glanced back at her. "That would put my other children at risk, and I'm not prepared to do that. No, I think we should simply make it clear that I am back in the city and back at work. If there is one thing that Phillip Stroh cannot stand it is a woman in authority." Her head inclined while she thought about that. "We should also get an I.D. on Linda Rothman's whereabouts, let's make sure that she has security. Andrea, too, she originally handled his case before it was assigned to Emma."

While the Commander spoke, Sykes was quickly making notes. "Do you really think that it's mostly women that he is going to come after?" Amy shook her head. "That seems predictable."

"Perhaps," Sharon shrugged, "but it was a woman that arrested him. It was a woman that built the case against him for the District Attorney's office, and if Linda Rothman had not underestimated the situation, then Rusty's testimony about the Weller letters would not have been allowed on record. It was also a woman that protected that witness and made sure that testimony was made available. Phillip Stroh was a serial rapist and murderer; I don't think we can discount the fact that he has a very severe dislike of the female gender. It is definitely something that we should be aware of, but we can't discount the men that are probably on his list too." Sharon tapped her nails against the side of her phone. "Amy," she turned in her seat, "dispatch a couple of officers to the condo. There is a murder board in Rusty's room. I noticed that it was still mostly in tact. I'd like the items brought to the murder room. I also want us to pull everything that is already in evidence." She paused for a moment. "Was Rusty's computer logged in?"

"We have it," Julio answered. "We still have his phone, too. He was tracking Stroh's movements since he returned to the country, but there was no evidence that it was Stroh until…"

"Until he made his presence known, yes I know." Sharon pushed all of that down. She swallowed the bitterness and the grief and allowed them to churn. It would fuel her, until it didn't. For now, her mind was focused on other things. "We definitely know that he is back now, let's make sure we are correct about his motivations. We need to get ahead of this before he crosses anyone else off his list."

Julio's fingers gripped the steering wheel tighter. In the back seat, Amy was already making the call. He considered the Commander for a moment. He had a feeling that he knew exactly what was fueling her. It was either going to work, or it was going to destroy her. There was a good chance it could do both. He made a note to keep an eye on that, but at the moment she wasn't wrong. Getting ahead of Stroh was the best way to catch him.

Aside from the calls that Amy was making in the backseat, they lapsed into silence for the remainder of the drive. It took forty-five minutes to get from the medical complex where they had picked her up to the parking garage downtown where Emma's body had been found. Sharon left the SUV the moment that it was parked and strode toward the cluster of officers that were moving around the deceased Deputy District Attorney's parked Range Rover.

"Lieutenant Provenza," Sharon squared her shoulders when she reached him. "The Detectives filled me in. What else have we learned?"

The Lieutenant whirled around at the sound of her voice. He scowled at her, and then at the Detectives behind her. This was exactly what he told them to _not_ allow. He should have known better, Julio could never say no to her and he wasn't really sure that Sykes had tried. He sure as hell knew Flynn wouldn't be any help. "I take it that reminding you that you're on leave is just going to delay the inevitable and irritate both of us?"

"That would be correct." Her head tilted. "I would suggest that we jump to the debriefing and avoid the delays." Sharon's brows lifted. "Do we know if anyone saw anything?"

Provenza shook his head at her. If he had ever met anyone more stubborn, he couldn't remember it. "We checked the plates of the cars parked on this row. We've been interviewing people as we identify them. DDA Rios either arrived after they were already inside, or they didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. No one was really paying a lot of attention."

"No, of course not," Sharon frowned. How often did anyone notice the cars around them when they parked? People were usually just on the lookout for anyone lingering outside of a vehicle. Sharon walked around behind the Range Rover. Her eyes narrowed while she studied it. "The windows are tinted. It would have been hard to see inside unless you were specifically looking. Somehow I doubt our suspect really cared about that." Sharon pushed her hands into the pockets of her slacks and turned to meet the Lieutenant's gaze again. "Have we pulled the security camera footage yet?"

"It should be ready to be reviewed when we get back to the PAB, Commander," Buzz rounded the SUV in time to answer that question.

"Hobbs is pulling Rios's files and schedule," Tao reported. "She's going to send over anything that might be related to the Stroh case."

Sharon nodded slowly. "Mike, I'd also like for you to pull anything that Rusty had on his computer or phone. I'm having everything that he had at home picked up. If we can figure out exactly why Stroh is here, beyond the apparently obvious, we can try to predict his next move." She studied the vehicle again and then turned back to her second in command. "Lieutenant, DDA Rios only suspended her security detail yesterday. For Stroh to have moved this quickly, it would suggest that he was watching her movements. If that were true, he could have just as easily killed her at her home. Why didn't he?"

"Either he's sending another message," Julio answered, "or that list we talked about in the car, it's already pretty long. Stroh is just one guy. That's a lot of people to watch. He can't be everywhere at once."

"No he cannot," Sharon replied. "Historically, we know that Stroh has worked with a partner. It would make little sense for that to stop now, so let's not discount the possibility." Her attention shifted to Tao, "Her phone, her computer, her car, and any devices that she had at home. I want them all checked. Let's find out if Stroh was following her, or otherwise keeping an eye on her movements." She turned and looked at Amy. "Let's have her security detail brought in and questioned. I want to know if they saw anything at all that would suggest that DDA Rios was being watched." Before the detective could answer, she turned again and focused on the Lieutenant. "Rusty Beck and now Emma Rios, I want security on DDA Hobbs, Linda Rothman, and let's invite Deputy Chief Howard over to have a chat with us."

Provenza simply cocked an eyebrow at her. "What about you?" he asked. "Stroh left you a pretty big calling card. If he's operating from some kind of a revenge list, he made it clear that you're on it."

"Yes he did," Sharon straightened. Her lips thinned while she returned his gaze. "Lieutenant, there will be uniformed officers at the hotel. When I am not there I will be with one or more of you, and let us not forget that I am also more than capable of protecting myself. We will focus our resources where they need to be." Her lips pursed for a moment. "Speaking of, maybe it's time for you to bring me up to speed on what it is, exactly, that Chief Mason is doing to keep the Stroh investigation fully covered." She wanted to be prepared before she met with him. She was about to insist that they move the case from _token search_ to full manhunt status.

Sharon turned while she waited for the Lieutenant to answer and looked at the Range Rover again. She was not going to stand at another crime scene where Phillip Stroh was their prime suspect. It was time to stop the madness, whatever it took; it was all going to end.

 **-TBC-**


	10. Chapter 10

**Fade To Nothing**

 **By: Kadi**

 **Rated: T**

 **A/N:** That was a longer absence than I planned, but good lord that cold knocked the stuffing out of me! Thanks for being patient, and to everyone who has been commenting, much love! Also, if I haven't mentioned it, my beta is awesome! Just remember, all errors leftover remain mine... and I'm so sorry I don't catch them all.

* * *

 **Chapter 10**

Activity in the Murder Room was in full swing by the time that Andy arrived. He took a moment, upon stepping inside, to let his gaze sweep the area. The main murder board was filled with details from the current murders while a second had been set up with the information that Rusty had gathered. His eyes narrowed, while his jaw clenched. Andy's gaze swept the room again before settling on the open blinds of his wife's office.

She was inside, seated behind her desk, and did not appear to be even the slightest bit enthused at what she was hearing from the men who were gathered in her office. Andy studied the scene for a moment. Provenza was looking just as frustrated. Howard was harder to get a read on, but he had always played the bureaucratic game a little too well for Andy's liking. Mason was a lot easier to read. This would be a good power play for him. Controlling their investigation would allow him to feel like he was controlling them. He was ambitious, and that was never a good thing in Andy's book.

Sharon must have felt his eyes on her. She looked up at that moment and met his gaze. Andy lifted the shopping bag he brought with him. He knew they hadn't really packed a lot to choose from, so he had gone by the condo to pick up a couple of suits for the both of them. Andy had changed while he was there, and was only just leaving to pick up Emily and Ricky when the officers arrived to collect the information from Rusty's murder board. When Sharon nodded at him, Andy walked around and pushed her door open.

"…until we have irrefutable proof that Phillip Stroh is responsible for both murders, Commander, I am not going to authorize the kind of resources that you are requesting."

Andy scowled at the Assistant Chief. He pushed the door closed behind him. "Irrefutable proof?" He said, voice rising along with is agitation. "What more do you need, Chief? A video of Stroh walking down Hollywood Boulevard holding a sign that says _I did it_."

Sharon pressed her lips together and looked at the surface of her desk. That wasn't exactly how she might have worded it, but he got the point across. Her lips pursed and her head tilted to one side when she glanced up again, this time to stare at him over the tops of her glasses. "Thank you, Lieutenant, but I'm not certain the Chief would require something quite that obvious." She arched a brow at the man in question, "Would you?"

Mason looked between the two of them. He questioned allowing the two of them to stay in the same division when he took over as Assistant Chief. He considered the downside, again, when the two of them had gotten married, and their honeymoon had left the division down two detectives, instead of one. Now he was wondering if he was really willing to deal with two grieving parents, instead of one. They might not be breaking any rules, and there was certainly nothing written that prevented them from being able to remain in the same division together, but it was left to his discretion. Mason was beginning to think that it might be time to separate them, get someone else inside Major Crimes that could actually do the work. He arched a brow at the Lieutenant. "Is that a video that you'd be able to film from your desk, Lieutenant? You don't really get out into the field much these days, as I understand it." He paused, "not unless your commanding officer is present, and I seem to recall that her own duty clearance is currently limited."

All eyes snapped to the Chief upon that statement. Even Provenza appeared surprised at the direction Mason had chosen to take the conversation. "Chief." Sharon rose slowly from her chair. She watched Andy straightening, squaring his shoulders. She could almost hear the sound of his teeth grinding together but she lifted a couple of fingers in his direction, the only sign he needed before stepping back and assuming a deceptively relaxed stance. "Unless you would like to discuss the way my division functions in a more formal setting, I think it would be better to table your _opinion_ about the Lieutenant's current status until we've concluded this investigation. In the meantime, we have two murders, committed within days of each other, and we are only minutes away from identifying Phillip Stroh on the security footage that we obtained from the parking garage. Arranging security for the individuals that I listed is not simply preemptive, it is the only responsible choice that we can make at this time. I would urge you to look again for room in the budget for the resources that we need. Or do Chief Howard and I need to explain, again, that finding Phillip Stroh is also a major priority for Chief Pope?"

The Assistant Chief returned her gaze. No, he didn't need to hear it again. She was only bringing it up to make certain that he didn't miss the inherent threat in her words. She would call the Chief unless he was willing to give in to her demands, and if she didn't, the Deputy Chief would. "Limited security details for the individuals that you indicated," the Chief agreed, "to be pulled as necessary. We will assign a full task force when you can prove that Stroh is still in the city." He shook his head as he walked toward the door. "Things were a lot quieter around here when those two," he told Provenza, "were still on their honeymoon."

"Hm." Sharon lifted her gaze to the ceiling. "Yes, Chief," she replied coolly, "and while I was away on my honeymoon, my son was murdered, despite the fact that he had a security detail. I am still waiting for an explanation for how that happened."

"I believe your division is handling that investigation, Commander. Perhaps you should direct that question to them, along with the department head responsible for the SIS team that was covering Mr. Beck."

Sharon's head tilted as he left. Her gaze moved from Chief Howard to Lieutenant Provenza. "That is exactly what I intend to do." He had just given her authority to investigate within the department, which would give her the ability to pull further resources as needed, without realizing that he had done it. Sharon shook her head. In his rush to establish his dominance, the Assistant Chief was allowing his ego to get away from him. It was going to need pruning very soon.

Andy snorted as he crossed the office. He dropped the shopping bag on her desk. "That is exactly why we wanted _you_ to get that job," he reminded her, and not for the first time.

"Noted." Sharon arched a brow at him. "Again." She gave him a pointed look. It was not a conversation that she was willing to have again. They had been over this too many times to count.

Fritz shook his head. "You know, he's not Taylor." He understood what the Commander had done, and the reasons for it, but she was going to run out of aces if she kept playing all of her cards up front. "He's going to realize what you did here, and he's going to be ready for it next time. Mason has plans for the department, and especially your division. If he doesn't think you're willing to work with him, he will find someone that is."

"I have made a career out of dodging the egos of the men who have been given authority equal to or greater than my own, gentlemen," Sharon shrugged at them, "and I am not especially concerned about the Chief's aspirations at this point in time. What I am concerned about is finding the man responsible for the two murders that were committed in this city, this week, one of which happened in my own home. Now, before any of you make the argument that I am not objective, I am going to stop you. There is not a single person in this room, or in this division, that is currently objective where those murders are concerned." She looked at Lieutenant Provenza, who had not yet managed to get her alone, and not for lack of trying, "your objections are noted, and I will understand if you wish to make them official. It will not change the fact that I am not going to stay at home and wait for Phillip Stroh to come knocking on my door again. So before we continue, are we all crystal clear on that point?" She looked at each man in turn, and focused on her husband last.

Andy simply returned her gaze. "Emily and Ricky are checked in at the Biltmore. I figured we would play hell getting extra security out of Mason, so I put us in a suite. The uniformed detail is on the door. It's going to be hell on my AmEx, but I figure my boss is good for it. It's an older hotel, not as many access points, expensive, but easier to secure," he explained. It was also closer to the PAB than any of the other choices he might have entertained. "You've got a change of clothes in the bag, and a couple more suits down in the car." He arched a brow at her, "so if that's not clear enough, let me go on record as saying I'm not dumb enough to tell you to sit this one out."

"Since those extra resources that you're asking for come from my department," Fritz interrupted, before the conversation could devolve any further, or Lieutenant Provenza could do more than scowl at the back of his partner's head, "what exactly are we talking about here? Do we actually expect to bring Stroh in?" He doubted very seriously that he would be willing to do that. This particular thorn in his side had been allowed to annoy them for too damn long. He was also having a hell of a time keeping Brenda out of the city. If it wasn't for the fact that she was in Atlanta visiting her father, he thought she might have already thrown herself into the middle of their investigation.

The Commander folded her arms across her chest. "We are going to operate precisely as we always do, and that is within the exact confines of the law. If Phillip Stroh refuses to be captured, Chief, there is nothing that any of us can do to prevent the consequences he may face for resisting. If you are looking for an official confirmation…" She glanced away, just for a moment, while she considered their options. "Yes, we are going to use all of the resources available to us to make sure that Phillip Stroh is found, and that he is stopped."

If Howard was surprised, he didn't show it. Instead, he nodded as he rose from his seat. "Very well, I'll go make sure those security details that we discussed are in place. Someone might want to give Linda Rothman a heads up before my guys show up at her office."

"We'll make sure that she is notified," Sharon nodded, "Thank you, Chief." She waited until he had gone before she turned her attention back to the Lieutenant. "Speak now, it may be your only chance," she said.

Provenza shook his head. "I don't disagree. It's just not how you normally do things. You generally leave the bulldozer approach to one of us and clean it up afterward. Are you sure that's how you want to play it? Even with Mason?"

"I am sure," She shrugged. "The Chief is still finding his footing with us. He isn't familiar with this suspect, and he may know all of the history as it presents itself on paper, but he wasn't here. He doesn't know what this division went through to get Stroh off the street the first time around. He wasn't part of the fallout, and he wasn't with us while we were keeping Rusty safe, every day, of the last six years of our lives. He didn't watch an abandoned child grow into a man and become more than a material witness. Chief Mason never had to butt heads with DDA Rios over Rusty's testimony or his foster placement. He was not part of the relationship that was built between her office and ours, or the respect that eventually grew out of those initial meetings. This is periphery for him. It is important because of the political ramifications. He is going to budge only where he has to. If I have to shove him over a few more inches, so be it. That is my job. Let me worry about it."

Provenza studied the floor for a moment. There was a greater concern to be had. He wasn't sure that she had thought about it yet, and he was pretty certain that Flynn hadn't. Finally, he nodded. "What about when you don't have a job left to worry about?" He asked quietly.

"That is a concern that I will address if and when it becomes an issue," Sharon assured him. "Lieutenant, please don't worry about that. I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. Not to mention a favor or two. Some returns are long over due and I am prepared to call them in if it becomes necessary. You needn't worry about me, not for any reason. Okay?"

He slanted a look at his partner and made a face. "Well, someone has to do it," he muttered, "Everyone else around here is too busy tripping over themselves trying to do your bidding. Did you pick up her dry cleaning too?"

Andy rolled his eyes at his partner. He fixed him with a bland look. "You know, I thought I was forgetting something. I'll make sure to do that on my way back to the hotel tonight."

Sharon lifted her gaze heavenward and drew a deep, calming breath. "Lieutenants. Is there anything else?"

Provenza made a face at his partner again, but shook his head. "No, Commander." The Lieutenant turned toward the door. "I'm going to see where Tao is with pulling the information on Stroh's movements from Rusty's computer. We'll let you know when we're ready for you."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." Sharon waited until he had gone before her gaze dropped to the shopping bag. She tipped it toward her and peered inside. Sharon made a low sound of approval. The dark blue, silk blouse was reserved enough for how she was feeling, and the charcoal pinstripe blazer that he picked would go well enough with the slacks that she was already wearing. "How were the kids when you left them?"

"Worried." Andy shrugged. He dropped into one of the now vacant chairs in front of her desk with a sigh. "Scared. Frustrated. Take your pick, Sharon. Ricky isn't all that pleased with either of us, and Emily is frightened enough for everyone to be willing to do whatever we tell her." His head inclined. "I also think she might have been flirting with Detective Paige, but I can only deal with one disaster at a time."

Sharon's mouth opened, but quickly closed again. She stared at her husband. She was fully prepared for his irreverent sense of humor to begin asserting itself again, especially now that they were back at work, but he looked utterly serious and completely convinced of what he was saying. She blinked a few times. He was staring back at her and there was not a single part of him that was at all amused. "You are absolutely correct," she stated, "and while that reminds me of a few question we had during our wedding reception, let's definitely save any further discussion until much, much later."

"That would be my preference, but she is her mother's daughter, she could have just been trying to get information out of her." Andy smoothed down his tie, as he got comfortable in his seat. He had opted for a gray shirt, but the tie was blue. "Ricky promised to stay put, and said he would deal with us later." He rolled his eyes at that. "The mortuary has been taken care of and I was still at our place when the uniforms dropped by. They should have everything," he nodded his head toward the murder room.

"At what point during the entire twenty-plus years that we have known each other have you ever known me to _flirt_ with anyone to get information?" Sharon rolled her eyes at him. "You are on increasingly thin ice, Lieutenant. You may not have been… how did you put it?" She folded her arms again and narrowed her eyes at him, " _Dumb enough to tell me to sit this out_ , but if I were you, I would consider your next words very carefully."

Andy tapped a finger against his pursed lips. "The Greg Miller deal." He pointed his finger at her. "I wasn't going to give you even an inch on that one, but you fluttered those lashes and got all pouty on me, and I didn't want to be the asshole that left you hanging. So instead, I had to put up with them," he waved his hand toward the murder room, "giving me hell for weeks for being the first one to cave."

Sharon stared at him, not entirely sure what he was talking about. It clicked, after a moment, and her eyes widened. "Are you talking about the grocery store case? Oh my god. I did not." Her hands moved to her hips. "I have never fluttered anything at you," she held up a hand to keep him from interrupting, " _before_ two years ago." She shrugged, "maybe three, but certainly never in a professional setting, and definitely not before you stopped being a jerk to me all the time."

"Why do you think I stopped being a jerk?" He smirked at her. Andy pushed himself out of the chair. "Don't deny it now, you know what you did."

"Hm." Her brow rose. "Do I?" Her lips pursed. "Tell me something, Lieutenant, do you have a problem with how that is working out for you now?"

"Nope." He walked over and pulled the blinds for her, so that she would be able to change after he left. "No problem at all. Except for the slightly charred and melting edges of my American Express card. I'm just pointing out the fact that the apples didn't fall very far from the tree where either of the kids is concerned. Expect the Ricky inquisition when you get back, I think he forgets, sometimes, just how long we've all been doing this."

"He does." Sharon shook her head. A small smile curved her lips. She knew that the kids were worried about her, and probably their stepfather, too, and she wished there was something she could do to allay those fears. Her priority, though, needed to be making sure that they stayed safe. "How bad is it?" She held out a hand, "the suite?"

Andy groaned. He pulled the folded receipt from inside his jacket and handed it to her, "brace yourself."

She grimaced. "Ouch." A few nights at that rate would put a sizable dent in their joint savings, especially after what they had spent on the wedding and their honeymoon. She dropped the receipt on her desk. She would do what she could to get most of it reimbursed, but it was unlikely. "Don't worry, your boss is good for it, one of them at least."

"I would love to see the look on Mason's face when you expense that." Andy finished pulling the blinds on the other side of her office and moved to the door. "I'm going to go get caught up. Are you okay here?"

"I am." She nodded once and smiled at him. "Thank you, Andy. I will join you in a few minutes." He left her to get changed and Sharon dropped into her chair. She leaned her head back and sighed. She was trying to act normal, they all were, more or less. The only problem was she didn't _feel_ normal. It was just as she had told Andy a couple of days ago. She had changed. She could sense it and she was certain the others could too. Even being there, in her office, didn't feel entirely normal any longer.

Sharon closed her eyes. It was in this office that she and Rusty had come to their first understanding. This was where she had made the decision that changed both of their lives. It was where they were the first time that he said he loved her. Her jaw clenched while she forced back a well of emotion. This office had always felt like a second sanctuary for her, but like the condo, it was also impacted by recent events. Sharon wondered if any part of her life would ever feel normal again, and in the absence of that, what she was meant to do with it.

A hand curled around his upper arm as Andy left the office. He scowled as he was jerked away from his desk and down the hall that led away from the murder room. A deep scowl drew his brows together. Andy jerked his arm free at the same time that he was pushed into one of the interview rooms. "What the hell is your problem?"

Provenza glared at him. "We all know what's wrong with her, but you want to tell me what the _hell_ is wrong with _you_? How can you just stand there while she tosses her career away? It's your job to—"

"No," Andy cut him off, "it's not." He shook his head at his partner. "The one thing that Sharon and I always had going for us, that made this work, is that we keep our personal relationship out of the office as much as we can. We don't get involved in the other's career, not if we can help it." She had definitely had to be involved in his since the heart attack, but that was part of the very thin line they walked with her being his boss. The difference was, though, she hadn't done it as his partner; she had done it as his boss and nothing more. His partner would have preferred it if he had retired, but his boss couldn't afford to lose him. "Dammit, Provenza, don't you get it?" He gestured helplessly, "She doesn't care, and I can't change that, because frankly… I don't exactly give a damn right now either. My job, my _only_ job right now is keeping her and the kids safe and making sure she doesn't lose herself in all this. That's it. That's all I give a damn about. The rest of it…" he shook his head again. "The politics, the red tape, Mason and his agenda… it's just bullshit. It doesn't matter. It stopped mattering for Sharon the minute we found Rusty."

"What do you think is going to happen to her when this is finished? What is she going to do when we've got Stroh dead or in custody and she doesn't have a career to speak of because she burned too many bridges? It's going to matter then. Dammit!" Provenza tossed his hands up in frustration. "She's already losing herself in this. She's cashing in the chips she's saved for years because she can't be bothered to play the game the way _she_ helped design it to be played. I shouldn't have to tell _you_ this. Of everyone in this damned building you should know better."

"You don't think I know?" Andy shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the floor. "She's done, Provenza. It ended for Sharon when Rusty died. She's cashing in those chips now, on this case, because it's going to be her last." His head lifted. He met his partner's gaze and shrugged. "She hasn't said it, I'm not even sure she's thought it. Of everyone in this damned building," he echoed, "I'm the one who knows, because I know her. For the last six years nothing has mattered more to Sharon than keeping Rusty safe. It doesn't matter that we weren't here. It doesn't matter that we couldn't watch him every second of every day, for the rest of his life or ours. It's never going to matter that there was nothing she could do to stop it. She's never going to forgive herself. It's over."

Provenza walked over and took a seat at the interview table. He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. "She's going to hunt him down. She isn't going to care how we find Stroh, as long as we do. The reason she's willing to waste so many favors on bringing in extra resources is because nothing else is ever going to matter as much to her as putting a bullet in Phillip Stroh's head." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Are you actually going to let her do that?"

"No." Andy shrugged again. He looked at the floor again. It was scuffed and scarred, and no amount of waxing would ever be able to bring it back. His bottom lip jutted out while he thought about his wife, and how the floor was a pretty damned good metaphor for her heart. She might be getting better physically, but a part of her would always be broken. She was never going to be the same. They could pretend, they could go through each day putting on a pretty damn good show for everyone, but that's all it would ever be, a show. He lost her when Rusty died, at least as she had been. She would never be that woman again, and all he could do was hold on to what was left. "I'm not going to let her lose herself to this," he said again, "we won't let it get that far. However much she's changed, I'm not sure that part of her is gone. In the end, I'm not really sure she could do it anyway. It doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen. You or me, Julio, Tao, hell even Amy, I don't care who does it, as long as it isn't Sharon. She's done; I'm not going to let everything she ever stood for be done too."

Provenza allowed his hands to drop. "So then, when it comes time, we have to make sure it's clean. We'll keep doing this by the book."

"Yeah." Andy took a couple of steps toward the table. "Has she ever let us do it any other way?" He shook his head. "It's all she's got now. So that's what we'll do."

His partner grew silent for several long moments. "Okay," Provenza finally said. "We'll do this your way, for now anyway. If that doesn't work, we'll figure something else out."

"Good." Andy turned, moving toward the door again, but stopped. "Provenza. She picked out a suit. I dropped off a check for the mortuary. We're putting her kid in the ground in a few days. Let's get the bastard before we do that."

"By any means," his partner answered. Even if those means meant following the rules, as they were written, every step of the way.

 **-TBC-**


End file.
